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I think that if you believe coding is an art form, you are deluding yourself. You probably wish that your chosen field of expertise would get more respect from

by brazzy 17y ago

I think that if you believe coding is an art form, you are deluding yourself. You probably wish that your chosen field of expertise would get more respect from society rather than being considered a boring occupation of geeks. I can understand that, but wishes don't make beggars ride, and neither will they make coding fashionable and cool. Code is not art, and never will be. Art is something created purely for its aesthetic appeal and to evoke emotions. Code written to be executed by a computer. It may have some aesthetic aspects but these are secondary to its executability. It also requires far too much prior knowledge to be appreciated by most people. At best, code can incorporate aspects of industrial design: an aesthetically pleasing symbiosis of elegance and functionality, but with the latter always being the dominant goal. The article also assumes a false contradiction between art and science that makes me suspect the author understands neither.

tapostrophemo 17y ago
"Code [is] written to be executed by a computer." Maybe. It also is to express the author's understanding, description and specification of the problem domain and problem solution to other humans. After all, most code will be compiled. The compiled output is what the computer executes, and there can be many high-level input languages that (theoretically) compile to the same machine code.
steveklabnik 17y ago
> Art is something created purely for its aesthetic appeal and to evoke emotions. What do you think of things like obfuscated Perl, Perl poetry, the Underhanded C Contest, obscure langauges like Brainfuck, 'joke' languages like Intercal or Malbolge, or even, say, Ruby on Rails? Sometimes code is created for a reasons other than functionality, or is functional while making commentary on the world or the way things should be. Also, languages themselves ooze philosophy. We talk about not 'writing Java in any language,' or how Rails is 'opinionated software,' or how Python is 'batteries included.' Every language expresses its authors viewpoints about the world. > It also requires far too much prior knowledge to be appreciated by most people. I didn't think that accessibility was a requirement for art. In fact, it would seem that among certain crowds, work that's too accessible isn't seen as art. My art history is admittedly really poor, but wasn't pop art looked down upon for a while? Besides, you can't possibly tell me that, say, modern art is accessible, yet it's still art. > The article also assumes a false contradiction between art and science that makes me suspect the author understands neither. I'm not saying that they're contradictory. As someone else summarized earlier, > I don't think the author's comparing a bit of C code to a Rembrandt painting in the visual sense, but saying that programmers should embrace those same ideals of creativity, innovation, and fluidity of thought that many artists do.

by brazzy 17y ago

tapostrophemo 17y ago

"Code [is] written to be executed by a computer." Maybe. It also is to express the author's understanding, description and specification of the problem domain and problem solution to other humans. After all, most code will be compiled. The compiled output is what the computer executes, and there can be many high-level input languages that (theoretically) compile to the same machine code.

steveklabnik 17y ago

> Art is something created purely for its aesthetic appeal and to evoke emotions. What do you think of things like obfuscated Perl, Perl poetry, the Underhanded C Contest, obscure langauges like Brainfuck, 'joke' languages like Intercal or Malbolge, or even, say, Ruby on Rails? Sometimes code is created for a reasons other than functionality, or is functional while making commentary on the world or the way things should be. Also, languages themselves ooze philosophy. We talk about not 'writing Java in any language,' or how Rails is 'opinionated software,' or how Python is 'batteries included.' Every language expresses its authors viewpoints about the world. > It also requires far too much prior knowledge to be appreciated by most people. I didn't think that accessibility was a requirement for art. In fact, it would seem that among certain crowds, work that's too accessible isn't seen as art. My art history is admittedly really poor, but wasn't pop art looked down upon for a while? Besides, you can't possibly tell me that, say, modern art is accessible, yet it's still art. > The article also assumes a false contradiction between art and science that makes me suspect the author understands neither. I'm not saying that they're contradictory. As someone else summarized earlier, > I don't think the author's comparing a bit of C code to a Rembrandt painting in the visual sense, but saying that programmers should embrace those same ideals of creativity, innovation, and fluidity of thought that many artists do.