Why is programming an art
blooki.st
Why is programming an art
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: Why is programming an art
#2We've got to stop assuming a programmer is a 'he'.
Re: Why is programming an art
#3I totally agree that programming is an art, but the art lies in the result, not in the "coding style".
Who cares how Michelangelo held his brush or his chisel; what matters is what he made.
Re: Why is programming an art
#4I totally agree that programming is an art, but the art lies in the result, not in the "coding style". Who cares how Michelangelo held his brush or his chisel; what matters is what he made.
I have to disagree when it comes to coding style.
Readability and being to able to maintain the code is just as important as the finished product.
Programming isn't just about one-shot projects, it's also about being able to pickup and work with existing source code. Whether it is for someone else or even yourself in the future.
Re: Why is programming an art
#5>> I wonder if sometimes all those books actually help you develop an efficient coding practice or are they just some sort of distraction towards your creativity.
That. I'd even go a bit further and say they actually hinder your creativity: can you even think of heroic fantasy without falling back into Tolkien's imagination?
Re: Why is programming an art
#6We've got to stop assuming a programmer is a 'he'.
English, and many other gendered languages, have a long history of using the masculine in place of an unknown. Using "he or she" instead is, in my opinion, both annoying to write and read.
Re: Why is programming an art
#7Re: Why is programming an art
#8I believe programming is an art because "Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." (Abelson, SICP)
This heart of the matter, and it means programming is an art, a social one. Like marketing or graphic design, it's an art for other people. Programs must be written to be as readable as possible, to as many people as possible, while still being functional and elegant. This requires an intuition of psychology and sociology, in addition to a firm engineering grasp. A great programmer must be both mathematically brilliant and socially empathic. If she lacks the former, she won't be able to solve Hard Problems; if she lacks the latter, she'll be a Cowboy Coder (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CowboyCoder) and her code will be worthless to society.
That's why it's an art.
Re: Why is programming an art
#9(On John Carmack) "It was written that his code is so ugly according to the best practices standards, that only he completely understands what he has written. And we all know that he is a genius."
No, his code isn't ugly. No, not only he understands it. It is actually considered exceptionally beautiful (http://kotaku.com/5975610/the-exceptional-beauty-of-doom-3s-...).
Beyond that, even if it was (which it isn't), you are not John Carmack. I don't know if dropping him into the article was supposed to bolster your point, but I can assure you it did the opposite. It reads like an oddly malformed appeal to authority. Bonus point: you can look at his code: https://github.com/id-Software
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Please, please stop reading books about style and creating your own styles! Follow the language / platform standards and idioms so your code will instantly be readable by other developers. Almost all languages & platforms have dominant coding conventions, follow them. 15 years ago, you had to bake your own standard, you don't need to do it anymore.
Use your creativity on solving your problem, not formatting your code.
Re: Why is programming an art
#10By these vague definitions is there any professional endeavor that isn't an art? And if not haven't we just removed all unique meaning from the word 'art'?