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I also see code as art, not in a simple visual sense but in a sense of elegant, clean and smart engineering solutions and use of language capabilities. Visual

I also see code as art, not in a simple visual sense but in a sense of elegant, clean and smart engineering solutions and use of language capabilities. Visual text part is something a linter should take care of for practical reasons.

epolanski 2y ago
That kind of reasoning I always disagree with. Elegant, clean and smart are not symptoms of artistry but craftsmanship. We can debate how much we want about the overlapping of the two boundaries, but you can be an extremely great painter (I've seen insane paintings and copies done by skilled painters) but an unremarkable and uninspired artist. If you wrote code that is smart, maintainable and clean, you achieved this by maximizing several engineering concerns (finding the best intersection among different concerns), there's no artistry involved. But at the end of the day, there's really not much to debate here, because unless we give a precise definition of what is and what is not art we can't make conclusions on something being artistic or not.
- mapcars 2y ago
  > symptoms of artistry but craftsmanship Its interesting, because in my native language the word Art and word Craftsmanship have common root and they are used in describing a great level of skill and mastery over something. I feel like in English people mostly use word Art to talk about visual things. While someone can make a painting with a few random drops of paint (or even just a black square) and people will call it art, for example in music there is clearly no art without a great deal of craftsmenship and skill. Similarly I see art of engineering (and computer science) connected with a great skill and insight.
  - epolanski 2y ago
    On the other hand, I just don't see any "artistic" part in software engineering, but again, it boils down to what exact definition you give to the art word. To me, code has none of the characteristics of true art. I can applaud the craftsmanship, creativity or originality, but at the end of the day it just does not generate strong emotions nor communicate political, spiritual or philosophical ideas, nor it generates any sense of beauty at all. If you stretch it literally anything can be art, but I really feel like what we're looking for in general is craftsmanship, not really artistry.
    - mapcars 2y ago
      > If you stretch it literally anything can be art For sure, in a way because its subjective. Even by your own definition of generating strong emotion, people had been inspired by all sorts of things, like apple falling from a tree. Apples have been doing the art of falling for thousands of years and one human actually noticed that.
  - digging 2y ago
    > for example in music there is clearly no art without a great deal of craftsmenship and skill. You're missing out on a whole world of experimental and ambient music, which may or may not demonstrate great skill and technique (although much of it does). The most obvious and extreme example of such art is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3 Art and craftsmanship definitely have overlap, but I think a well accepted Anglosphere understanding of art is that it is expressive. High levels of skill and technical knowledge will naturally lend to an artist being able to be more expressive through nuance and variety. But they're neither separate nor identical concepts. In any act of creation, both craftsmanship and artistry can be evaluated separately. I think very high levels of craftsmanship naturally lend toward raising the level of artistry, and vice-versa, but they're describing different features of the creation. Craftsmanship is largely about technical quality, choices of material/medium, soundness, precision, etc. Whereas artistry will describe how it feels to perceive the creation.

epolanski 2y ago

That kind of reasoning I always disagree with. Elegant, clean and smart are not symptoms of artistry but craftsmanship. We can debate how much we want about the overlapping of the two boundaries, but you can be an extremely great painter (I've seen insane paintings and copies done by skilled painters) but an unremarkable and uninspired artist. If you wrote code that is smart, maintainable and clean, you achieved this by maximizing several engineering concerns (finding the best intersection among different concerns), there's no artistry involved. But at the end of the day, there's really not much to debate here, because unless we give a precise definition of what is and what is not art we can't make conclusions on something being artistic or not.

mapcars 2y ago
> symptoms of artistry but craftsmanship Its interesting, because in my native language the word Art and word Craftsmanship have common root and they are used in describing a great level of skill and mastery over something. I feel like in English people mostly use word Art to talk about visual things. While someone can make a painting with a few random drops of paint (or even just a black square) and people will call it art, for example in music there is clearly no art without a great deal of craftsmenship and skill. Similarly I see art of engineering (and computer science) connected with a great skill and insight.
- epolanski 2y ago
  On the other hand, I just don't see any "artistic" part in software engineering, but again, it boils down to what exact definition you give to the art word. To me, code has none of the characteristics of true art. I can applaud the craftsmanship, creativity or originality, but at the end of the day it just does not generate strong emotions nor communicate political, spiritual or philosophical ideas, nor it generates any sense of beauty at all. If you stretch it literally anything can be art, but I really feel like what we're looking for in general is craftsmanship, not really artistry.
  - mapcars 2y ago
    > If you stretch it literally anything can be art For sure, in a way because its subjective. Even by your own definition of generating strong emotion, people had been inspired by all sorts of things, like apple falling from a tree. Apples have been doing the art of falling for thousands of years and one human actually noticed that.
- digging 2y ago
  > for example in music there is clearly no art without a great deal of craftsmenship and skill. You're missing out on a whole world of experimental and ambient music, which may or may not demonstrate great skill and technique (although much of it does). The most obvious and extreme example of such art is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3 Art and craftsmanship definitely have overlap, but I think a well accepted Anglosphere understanding of art is that it is expressive. High levels of skill and technical knowledge will naturally lend to an artist being able to be more expressive through nuance and variety. But they're neither separate nor identical concepts. In any act of creation, both craftsmanship and artistry can be evaluated separately. I think very high levels of craftsmanship naturally lend toward raising the level of artistry, and vice-versa, but they're describing different features of the creation. Craftsmanship is largely about technical quality, choices of material/medium, soundness, precision, etc. Whereas artistry will describe how it feels to perceive the creation.