Programming as Art

While on the subject of style... A while back I wrote an article about the relationship between programming and art, and the aspects of programming that could be considered artistic. Now, I think it's time to share it with the world.

Writing computer code is an act of communication. As such, the thoughts and feelings that drive the act are comparable to the impulses the motivate painters, writers and musicians. Programming is an attempt to take an idea that does not have a concrete existence and express it. Along the way, programmers are required to make thousands of choices, many of which will have an aesthetic impact on their code. The emotions a programmer brings to her work will shape the code. In the end, the source code that gives life to the programmer’s abstract ideas can be elegant or inventive or it can be ugly and spaghetti-like.

Is it possible to call a piece of code "beautiful" or "artistic"? While we may never see sheets of source code hanging in the Louvre, I believe the answer is yes.

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