Is Programming Art?

[codeexploiter]

Hi all,

What is the nature of programming? Is it art or science?

what is your view about this?

Regards

[jscheuer1]

Programming as a discipline is language. Language is both art and science.

[BLiZZaRD]

It definitely takes both sides of the brain, where "normally" art is right sides and language/science are left.

Ever wonder why there are more/better left handed artisits and more/better right handed lingusts and mathematicians?

[Twey]

Gosh, isn't this board getting philosophical? First morality, now aesthetics?

I believe that anything that requires ingenuity is a form of art. Programming definitely qualifies for this, as does mathematics, linguistics, and, yes, philosophy And, of course, all art is also a science; the aim of art is to create something original whilst adhering to certain rules that make the piece "beautiful," or worth creating. We don't always know what those rules are, but they definitely exist, in painting, mathematics, philosophy, and definitely in programming, as anyone who is experienced in that art will well know. To give a stereotypical example of chemistry, one can quite easily simply combine any two chemicals, but this won't necessarily be special, since it has no purpose and no outcome -- we've overstepped the rules that define the use of the experiment, so it no longer has any meaning.

The rules for things that are commonly considered art, such as music or painting, differ from those of chemistry only that we don't know exactly what they are. A painter can know that by combining a certain set of colours, s/he will produce something that is pleasing to the eye, or evokes a given emotion, but can't define exactly what it is about that combination that causes that effect.

[jscheuer1]

When I said language (of which programming is a subset) is both art and science, I was thinking of both the science involved (grammar, usage, history, etc.) and the art of its use in novels, poems, most speech, etc.

It is possible to have examples of a language that are virtually devoid of art. In actual practice, this is almost never the case.

[djr33]

Cleary, syntax is science. Logic is as well.
However, creative use of both, which is what makes a program good or bad (anyone can cut and paste an if statement...) is art.
Also, much of the time, what is generated is art, like a webpage (or an application, on that end of programming. Or even an image, with the PHP GD library and other things.)

[Twey]

Similar to the debate over whether fractals are art, I suppose. More human involvement, though.

[chechu]

Programming a code is science, deciding what a code should have to look like onlie, is art.
My wife, a paintor, sometimes draws designs of sites, while my cousin, a programmer, tries to make a code so that it looks like my wife's design.

[Sikky]

I love this discussion - in this case Im an artist and scientist "hurray" at last.

[jscheuer1]

Programming a code is science, deciding what a code should have to look like onlie, is art.

It can't always be broken out that easily. Even the way code with no presentational aspect is written, can be art.