buda said:
<OT>
There is an unfortunate (for this matter) duality to the meaning of the word
'art' in the English language. Coding is certainly an art in the sense that
is close to 'skill', or something similar. However, I don't see how one
could make a case about coding being an art in the other sense (like
painting, music or whatnot). Sure, you can find beauty even in code, both
writing it and reading it, but that's a bit of a stretch in my opinion. I
think "other people" think saying coding (or math for that matter) is an art
(in the poetry sense) is extremely geeky
I am an artist, engineer and programmer so I guess I'm qualified to
comment on this. The way you look at art, that is looking at 'beauty',
is how a non-artist looks at art. The way artists, when among
themselves, look at art is different. It is very much how a programmer
looks at a piece of code. Artists, when looking at art, consider things
programmers often consider when looking at code. The technical
difficulties in achieving an effect. The problems and solutions in
producing the artwork. The originality of idea. The (minimal or
excessive) use of materials and resources. What can be achieved with
very limited resources. Wasted resources. The engineering involved
(especially for very large sculptures). How viewers (end users) respond
to your artwork.
These technical details are often not fully appreciated by the casual
observer just as protected memory and pre-emptive multasking are not
fully appreciated by the casual Windows users.
When I'm with my art friends, the contents of the conversation change
but the kind of conversation is very similar to what find in
engineering circles: problem solving. The artist, like the engineer, is
essentially a problem solver. And like the engineer, the artist have
formal tools at his disposal: vanishing point perspective, color theory
etc.
I don't care much about that as such, but thinking about comparing even the
most beautiful piece of code with a 'quality' poem seems silly
That may be (I've never been good at literature) but when photographers
talk about the perfect shot they talk about shutter speed, film grain
and color saturation the way programmers talk about modularity, code
clarity and scalability in the perfect code.
Of course, there is the middle ground when the two actually meet such
as HTML where both the code and the artwork can be made to be
beautiful.
PS: Check out my "art" art at:
http://slebetman.homeip.net/nart.html
for coding art, that site runs on a web server I wrote myself.
