If you are a developer, you are an artist. I don't care how STEM you think you are, you are an artist. You are creating a vision. Even if you are creating non-graphical interfaces, you are still creating something beautiful.
So now you're an artist! Congrats! What does it actually mean to be an Artistic Software Developer? I define it as a person who cares about technology and writing software. An Artistic Software Developer is someone who cares about the quality of code, the flexibility, the feel, to name a few. They have a passion for creating sustainable software. They care about code.
I know I am not a traditional artist. I've never been good at art. Sure I can edit a video and make it fancy, but I know that I am no traditional artist. No one is going to come up to me and ask for a painting. If someone would do that, they would get a terrible stick figure. But if someone were to ask me to write a simple calculator, I would develop it in a way that is: understandable, clean, protective, simple, and scalable. Just like an author creates beautiful sentences, we too can create beautiful code.
The day I started to see code as an art form was the day I became an Artistic Software Developer. The book, Clean Code, lays out a pretty good definition of good code. The book not old describes what good code looks like, it also explains why good code is good. It focuses on the fundamentals and the focus on readability and quality.
Be an artist. Care about code. Consider others and how they might view your code. To be a good Artistic Software Developer, you must have the ability to create software that is not only simple but also explains itself. Code can be art. Code is art. Become an artist. Care about your code!
Top comments (1)
I like how DHH compares programming to writing. As in actually writing prose or poetry. youtube.com/watch?v=9LfmrkyP81M