DEV Community

Is programming art?

Parker Software on June 12, 2020

“You might not think that programmers are artists, but programming is an extremely creative profession. It’s logic-based creativity.” – John Romero...
Collapse
 
eljayadobe profile image
Eljay-Adobe

In Alan Cooper's closing keynote address "How Far Have We Come?" at Agile08 conference, he discuss this very topic.

He ponders whether programming is art, science, engineering, or craft. (It is a fabulous presentation. I highly recommend reading through it.)

Collapse
 
parkersoftware profile image
Parker Software

Great read, thank you!

Collapse
 
adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

I was a painter, that was art. This is better than art, it's useful.

Collapse
 
h1kigaeru profile image
h1kigaeru • Edited

I would also add that we, programmers, do classify things into objects and break up something big in a lot of small pieces and then connect them between each other. We are good in Ran's test and that shows that we are good in abstraction thinking. Of course there's a lot of patterns and programmers often tend to follow them and imply one or another in their projects. However, programmers can encounter new problem, when they can't just get by those pattern. And it's time where coders apply their knowledge from different aspects to solve the problem, to come up with something new, they have never happen to do. If it's not creativity, then I have no idea what it is.

Collapse
 
netk profile image
David Quintero 📿

"When art comes into being as a form of self-expression, we easily recognize it on museum galleries or concert halls. When it is pursued within a methodology, we call it science.

Programming has elements of both."

Excerpt from:

Collapse
 
phlash profile image
Phil Ashby

IMO: it's a continuum from pure science (think of formal proofs of validity in Z for safety critical software) to pure art (demoscene contributions, humans riffing on machines for fun). most of us are somewhere in the middle, wanting to express creativity but needing to write unit tests too :)

Collapse
 
paddy3118 profile image
Paddy3118

There can be artistry in testing too, but unit testing does seem to be soul destroying. 😉

Collapse
 
steelwolf180 profile image
Max Ong Zong Bao • Edited

Yes, it's art, cause it allows us to test systems to do something that can be fun or interesting. You can create music and sing rock song that is a fizzbuzz program. You can look at this, it's awesome called The Art of Code which can be mind-blowing. especially the first 1/4 of it.

Collapse
 
bobnudd profile image
Ash Grennan

I always think of DHH's thoughts when exploring such ideas:

We're not software engineers, we're software writers.

Thinking about this perspective and having such a mindset does help you write code better, and therefore create better art which benefits all.

Collapse
 
jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️ • Edited

An art magazine that publishes code as art - code-art.xyz/issues/

Collapse
 
phlash profile image
Phil Ashby

Nice, not sure they quite get the 'code' bit though - available in print or PDF... perhaps they should take inspiration from PoC||GTFO (NB: NSFW title!), where some of the downloads are executable.. even the PDFs - sheer genius :)

Collapse
 
raresportan profile image
Rares Portan

Yes, it is more art than science.
You can write the same program in many ways. As in art, there is no clear way to do it. It really depends on who you are and what your craft is.

Collapse
 
paddy3118 profile image
Paddy3118

I go by: Not every graphical representation is seen as "art"; some of maths/science is art - I get the same feelings from their contemplation.
Code is maths.