I asked this question a while ago on some forums out there in the internet, but no programmers answered. The only answers I got were from people who did not ever experience programming at all.
Some people told me that programming is merely the human response to the necessity of algorithms, and not an emotional or expressive thing.
Others said to me that it is not art because it does not stimulate our senses.
Other people even told me that programming does not give a sensitive POV of the world, and thus it is not an art.
On the other hand, there were people who defended that programming is an art as far as the programmer is an artist.
So, let us get to it. DEVelopers out there, do you think programming is an art? Why?
Latest comments (21)
in the same way medicine is an art, and a practice
Hello, my personal opinion is that programming you can call as a art since you create something, that isn't created by typing code its like art, which combines science into it as one.
As a participant/winner of the IOCCC I will say that those who say it's not an art aren't programmers or are very very inexperienced.
No emotion? I have no idea where they get that idea. What about game programmers (I'm one of them)? They think that that involves no emotion when you are creating another world? These people are beyond ignorant - they don't have a clue about human emotion or more likely emotion full stop.
Debugging is an art too.
Basically anyone who thinks programming is not an art isn't in the position to say that programming is not an art and therefore should not be considered worthy of being asked the question.
Simple as that.
Hopefully I'm not too late to the party but I actually just thought about this in lieu of binge watching Disney documentaries. I do think its an art. I think programming is very much familiar with the creative process in many ways, where iteration after iteration is a sketch and even when the final product is made, there might be flaws that get taken into account in the next project. And that becomes a cycle.
My favorite quote on this topic is one that I found on @thepracticaldev 's Instagram account a while ago:
"You might not think that programmers are artists, but programming is an extremely creative profession. It's logic-based creativity." - John Romero.
To add to the discussion, programming has similar problems as art does. Programming can be opinionated, and often can be divided into many -isms, from OOP & FP and different frameworks & languages, to various patterns and indentation style.
I think that quality and beautiful software shows great form of art, its output and code along with people and processes.
The most fitting definition of poetry I've ever read is Coleridge's: "the best words in the best order." This definition applies equally well to programming.
Not everything written in code is art, but the act of creating something with words is an artistic tool, and beautiful code is art.
The best concept of code as art, to me, was expressed in a science fiction book (one of my favorites, and favorite author):
play.google.com/store/books/detail...
There's no way I could summarize it properly (I tend to put the F- back into Art half the time it seems!) You'll have to read it. But there was one part that when the code was visualized to its fullest, it looked like a perfectly rotating piece of DNA. Very cool! But again you can't really get it unless you read it.
I definitely consider it an art depending of the way of programming.
I have seen code that do a certain process written in different ways.
An example :
if (condition) {
return object.operationA;
}
else {
return object.operationB;
}
when it can be modified in a cleaner way.
return (condition) ? object.operationA : object.operationB;
Obviously they both do the same, however, in the second way it looks aesthetic, clean. Of course, from my spot such a code i consider a art.