Recently Tom Moody wrote (in part):

Does one have to write code to make art or music with digital tools? Two proponents of code are designer/MIT Media Lab professor John Maeda (on the hi-fi end of the digital spectrum) and the BEIGE crew […snip]

The beef about using consumer software is that an engineer makes aesthetic choices for you.[…snip]

[…] An analogy I’ve used is the purist artist who thinks you have to grind your own pigment to paint, either because store bought colors aren’t good enough or out of some strict truth-to-materials dictate. I think that applies to John Maeda—his “if you aren’t programming you aren’t using the computer