> Recently I've found ..

Glad of someone profit of my messy bibliotheca!

You mention: art, beauty and fun. These are all terms related to the the human being as central point of view. I have the same idea and I consider programming, in the way we like it, as an humanistic art, not only an art. When the human is in the center of our perspective there is room for creativity and happiness.

Starting from Knuth's article you mentioned, I've written a mini serie (unfinished): Antiquitates - liber I - In memoriam Robert M. Pirsig and Antiquitates - liber II - De trivio atque quadrivio are available atm.

You can profit also the reading of a recent thread: Why Perl in 2020.

> IT managers often see them ("magic tools") as a means "not to depend too much on programmers". It's laughable...

I found this not laughable at all :)

While we can still have an humanistic approach to IT and programming, the business and therfore managers have a moneycentric approach and to not depend too much (and one day to not depend at all) on programmers is a key point in their strategy.

"Magic Tools" must be run by an idiot formed to accomplish boring tasks. If this worker is unpleasant or costs too much, they can replace them with another one with easy. In another corner of the world where salaries are risible? Even better!

In this way I also see the declining of Perl: is too humanistic. Not a suitable tool for robot-workers.

Higher the complexity of tools, the abstraction, harder to see the whole picture. If someone still has a vague idea of the whole picture they will be seen as wizards in some years.

My hope is that the above schema will collapse on itself oneday, all togheter. Then a good old sysadmin, perl outfitted, will be valuable as gold.

L*