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Programming is Art

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Re: Programming is Art

#81

Post by KurSix »

gps372 wrote: post #58

Most solutioning is art, given that you should have more than one way to reach the target state and target state itself is negotiable and non-concrete. When there are multiple options you are forced to analyze between them, sometimes you have a preferred option if the analysis has been done before. Your choices while solutioning will reflect your experience and how you think. In short, it definitely reflects 'you'. Y…

If AI makes code more stylistically uniform, it might actually make those deeper choices more visible

Re: Programming is Art

#82

Post by stingraycharles »

sunkeeh wrote: post #72

Art is "expression of an idea". Programming ISN'T art; the program/game/website could be, but programming is a CRAFT. The people he mentions are not artists, they are craftsmen.

It’s a similar type of art like pottery can be.

Edit: I see you changed your comment and now introduced it being a craft, which changes the comment entirely.

Re: Programming is Art

#83

Post by gps372 »

KurSix wrote: post #81
gps372 wrote: post #58

Most solutioning is art, given that you should have more than one way to reach the target state and target state itself is negotiable and non-concrete. When there are multiple options you are forced to analyze between them, sometimes you have a preferred option if the analysis has been done before. Your choices while solutioning will reflect your experience and how you think. In short, it definitely reflects 'you'. Y…

If AI makes code more stylistically uniform, it might actually make those deeper choices more visible

Yeah! Thus showing a mirror of the deeper 'you' to yourself. Interesting thought!

Re: Programming is Art

#84

Post by sph »

Programming might be art, but being a career programmer isn't, the same way being paid to paint vases day in, day out for a living following specifications and the whims of your superiors makes you an artist.

A big component of art is self-expression. There is very little of it when you're being paid to write code, except maybe choosing your editor theme and minor stylistic choices of your source code.

Re: Programming is Art

#85

Post by CorvusCrypto »

I can appreciate the sentiments the author has to their own career, but personally it doesn't resonate with me. I'm a firm believer in the idea that systems you intend to be used by others (imo) must be driven by measurable, consistent, and constrained processes that are dictated by goals of the project. Sometimes this involves subjective judgements which are then later corrected as data is collected. If we are overloading the term art to mean anything where there is subjective judgement applied, or similarly where there is any enjoyment of a process, okay sure I can get behind it. But if we mean subjectivity in expression of logic and rule, then no I do not agree that this is the reason we should be more thoughtful of LLM-based codegen tooling (of which there are many more reasons to avoid it in many contexts which do not require going into the subjective aspects).

--- > These are true programmers who write code regardless of income

I also - without any hesitation - detest this type of bullshit. Get off your high horse. Programmers are programmers, there is no reason to devolve arguments that divide into classes for the sake of adding emotional weight to one side.

Re: Programming is Art

#86

Post by dmitrijbelikov »

theorchid wrote: post #78
dmitrijbelikov wrote: post #42

Art is a system. And programming is a system too. They are different systems. > If I learned PHP, I could build back-end applications. If I learned HTML and CSS, I could build websites. So, what have you been doing for the last 10 years and why i see only 2026 in your github?

> So, what have you been doing for the last 10 years and why i see only 2026 in your github? I spent 10 years making money. I didn't see the point in spending time on open source. I never committed any code to open source until 2026. Because, for me, programming isn't art or a hobby.

And this answer of yours seems even more suspicious to me.

I don't quite understand you, sometimes you contradict one of your points of view, sometimes another.

Re: Programming is Art

#87

Post by theorchid »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #48
dmitrijbelikov wrote: post #42

Art is a system. And programming is a system too. They are different systems. > If I learned PHP, I could build back-end applications. If I learned HTML and CSS, I could build websites. So, what have you been doing for the last 10 years and why i see only 2026 in your github?

I read your comment first, and thought it was a bit uncharitable to the author. But then looking through their social media presence. No sign of commentary before late 2025. Looking at the wayback machine, the site was first published in January 2026 with no blog. Then in Feb, the site was updated with a blog archive, including posts from 2025, before the site's blog functionality was active. The blog post ends: >I d…

> No sign of commentary before late 2025.

This blog is written under a pseudonym. Therefore, there is no history for this blog before 2025. Social media accounts and GitHub are also set up under this brand.

> Which has all of the hallmarks of a Claude generated essay (or just a human failing the Turing test).

This was my first blog post, and I used AI to edit it. I wrote 10 drafts before I ended up with the version I published on my blog. And I don't like this post. I wrote it myself. AI only suggested phrasing that I thought sounded good. In the next post, I also used AI to edit the text, but to a lesser extent. Since then, I haven't used AI at all when writing or editing texts.

Re: Programming is Art

#88

Post by theorchid »

dmitrijbelikov wrote: post #86
theorchid wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, what have you been doing for the last 10 years and why i see only 2026 in your github? I spent 10 years making money. I didn't see the point in spending time on open source. I never committed any code to open source until 2026. Because, for me, programming isn't art or a hobby.

And this answer of yours seems even more suspicious to me. I don't quite understand you, sometimes you contradict one of your points of view, sometimes another.

So where's the contradiction? For many people, programming is art. They enjoy writing code. I'm just not one of those people.

For me, programming is a way to make money and build projects.

Re: Programming is Art

#89

Post by dmitrijbelikov »

theorchid wrote: post #88
dmitrijbelikov wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this answer of yours seems even more suspicious to me. I don't quite understand you, sometimes you contradict one of your points of view, sometimes another.

So where's the contradiction? For many people, programming is art. They enjoy writing code. I'm just not one of those people. For me, programming is a way to make money and build projects.

Topic title: Programming is Art

> for me, programming isn't art or a hobby

> make money

Do you mean their seal?

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