[grantmoney]

Why is art reduced to craft in this modern age? Really, for any programmer to assume they are being artistic just because their code is 'nice' is absolutely absurd, and it's horrifying to think it happens. To be an Artist now is to be a social/cultural/literary critic. There cannot be art in programming, no matter how creative one thinks they code. Please stop it!

[kellishaver]

What about commercial art and design? Would you consider those as having been "reduced to a craft" as well? One could look at this from the same perspective.

It all depends on your definition of art. For me, that's taking raw materials and making them into something beautiful, whether it's to solve a problem or elicit some sort of emotional/social/intellectual response, or make a statement is entirely irrelevant. Commercial art is every bit as much of an art. It's just art with a different purpose.

There is no reason code cannot be beautiful. Of course I don't mean that in a visual sense. It's letters and numbers and symbols that need to be structured in specific ways in order to function. But in an intellectual/functional sense, code can certainly be beautiful and creative and elegant.

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.

It's more about opening your mind to new ideas and learning to find and appreciate the beauty in the function of the code.

[steveklabnik]

You've summed it up very well.

[kellishaver]

Thanks.

[teeja]

I could argue that art consists of representing the world of human experience. That 'art' is right-brained, non-reasoning, 'intuitive'. There are many ways of representing the world, some of them 'better' at communicating one's intentions than others. E.g. Picasso beats Ricky 3rd-grader, Mozart beats Milli Vanilli.

Now I'd argue that a computer program is a representation of a world. It has logical aspects, yes (just as Norman Rockwell's 'art'.) But it also has aspects of quality, design (definitely non-logical), and, particularly important, how well it stands up to being battered by the input the world throws at it ... how well it represents a world.

Just like scientific theories, or mathematical conjectures, success may depend as much on beauty as on reasoning. Diamonds are judged just as much by cut as they are by weight. See Kuhn. See what happened to Eddington's 'Fundamental Theory'. And please respect Knuth's sense of the 'Art of Computer Programming'. Whether you understand what 'art' means yet or not.

[InclinedPlane]

I think you've confused a fraction of art with the whole. Art comes in many forms both low and high, both utilitarian and purely expressive. Art can be made by artists, but it can also be made by artisans (craftsmen).

This used to be obvious, most of the great Renaissance artists would be perfectly familiar with this definition. Many of them served as both artist and artisan depending on the circumstances. Is the ceiling of the Sistine chapel art? Few would say otherwise, yet it is just a mural. Is St. Peter's Basilica art?

Where do you draw the line? Is architecture art? Is graphic design art? There is no chasm between practical art and expressive art, it is a continuum with extremes at either end. To refuse the label of "art" to the craftsmen is an extreme disservice to their talent and their souls and to us all.

[derefr]

Can you elaborate on what exactly you mean by "art?" We can't have a useful discussion about a concept (and especially a duscussion about one concept being in the equivalence class of another) without knowing what our terms mean. In what ways are art and craft different? What are examples of art? Are you equating "art" with "fine art," or do you mean something else?

[grantmoney]

Apologies for being vague. Art is always a hard one to define in absolute terms, but the question that makes it easier (I think) is what is left for art? How does one become an artist these days? Is it enough to be purely ornamental? When we have advertising, music video, and graphic design to satisfy those types of creative spirits, what does the artist do to compete as Artist? Also with language in the West in the state it currently is in (words as symbols), art can mean anything to anyone, which is kind of a problem.

In the ways science must update its language when the language is polluted by society (cult, idiot, retard, etc), the language that describes creativity might do well with a refresh. I don't know - I look around, and every corner of every room has some genius sitting in a chair. I mean really, is this at all possible, and if so, new words should be invented to distinguish the great genius and just genius. I think the same problem exists when describing what creativity is, because to say it's all art is to say everything is merely art.

What I think art has become is a perspective. To be successful in art is to be able to initiate a unique conversation about the world using the Artist's worldview. A craftsperson requires a skill set - the ability to shape matter into an object, but almost nothing more. The artist must use what they create to say something profound. In an environment such as programming, this doesn't seem possible, but I'd love to be proven wrong. In saying that though, if there was to be any art in programming, it would be to program in a such an ugly fashion that no-one would think possible that the code was functional, but it would be.

[steveklabnik]

It seems that 'art' vs 'craft' shares the same relationship that 'computer science' and 'programming' do. Not they're equivalent, but that they both share the same kind of higher vs lower distinction. Mildly off-topic, but I think it relates well to your 'pollution' sentiment. Universities have certainly been using the name 'Computer Science' while teaching 'programming.' And not teaching it well. But that's another discussion.

> In an environment such as programming, this doesn't seem possible, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

Not that anything can be proven, but I do think that code can say profound things. It might just be that it's because I'm only (almost) 24, but I feel that code helps me to understand myself, and has managed to change my opinions on seemingly unrelated topics. I'd agree that art has a higher calling than 'pretty pictures,' and that it "say[s] something profound." I didn't say much about this in my post, though.

To fully relate how I think about this would require a whole essay. So I'll be a little short, and sum it up with a small example.

I've been programming computers since I was 7. That's 17 years of coding. Yes, it's not like I was writing anything amazing at that young of an age, but those silly little games that I wrote certainly affected me personally. In a very stereotypical way, I was drawn to libertariansim, even though my parents are pretty staunch Republicans. I discussed a lot of political philosophy with a friend of mine who has very different views than I, and she remarked how much she saw a similarity between my thought process and the workings of a computer, and it really made me think about my views on the world. I realize that I tend to view the world as a system of equations, or a function with inputs and outputs, that I have pretty simple heuristic functions by which I make decisions, and that most people _are not like this at all_. Which came first? Do I think this way because I've been programming my entire life, or do computers work that way because they're a human creation?

This realization causes me to compare and contrast code and life on a fairly regular basis. When I go to write an API, I try to think in terms of communication. Connecting two applications is like connecting two people, and you have to bridge the gap between the two. When I'm naming functions or writing documentation, I think about how I'd explain my understanding of a problem to another person, and how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. When I see language wars, I think of how they're similar to real wars; no matter who 'wins', _everyone_ loses. Also that sometimes, quantity (of users) is it's own kind of quality (of design decisions.) When I think about Open Source, I try to resolve the cognitive dissonance that makes me say "socialism can't work" with the fact that I participate in something that's socialist in nature on a regular basis.

At this point, I'm rambling. Sorry. But I hope that I've at least started to make you think about the topic a little. The medium may be a bit strange, but it's not like modern art "say[s] something profound" to John Q Public, either.