Can Programming be Art?

Lately I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin. It’s an excellent book and the key point is that your work should be a platform for art:

Art [in this context] is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another. … I think it’s art when a great customer service person uses a conversation to convert an angry person into a raving fan. And it’s art when Craig Newmark invents a new business model that uses the Internet to revolutionize classifieds." …

Godin really expands the traditional definition of “art”; It doesn’t have to just be a painting that you hang on a wall, but it’s something that you create which directly impacts another in a dramatic and positive way.

Given that I’m a programmer, It makes me wonder in what ways programming and it’s output can be considered art– Is twitter art? What about facebook?

According to Godin, both of those sites would be art. They are unique and they have profoundly impacted people (as opposed to most software).

So a software product can be art, but what about an individual piece of code. Can that be art?

Obviously, O’Reilly thinks so given that they’ve published a book on the topic of beautiful code. I have to agree that some code and frameworks (eg – jQuery and Rails).are so elegant and  well-written that they are a true joy to work with.

It seems odd at first to be to lump programmers in with artists. Aren’t they two totally different types of people – one left-brained and the other right-brained? Yet, in many ways, they’re closer than you think.

Hackers and Painters

Paul Graham nailed this strange dichotomy in his classic essay entitled Hackers and Painters:

Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I’ve known, hackers and painters are among the most alike.

What hackers and painters have in common is that they’re both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. They’re not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to make good things they discover some new technique, so much the better.

At the end of the day, both are craftsman.

I can appreciate this more than most because I actually studied art and computer science in school. Both held great appeal for me and most likely for similar reasons:They both allow you to perform solitary acts of creation.

Software Craftsmanship

In fact, there’s a powerful new movement in software focusing on craftsmanship – they even have their own manifesto:

As aspiring Software Craftsmen we are raising the bar of professional software development by practicing it and helping others learn the craft. Through this work we have come to value:

Not only working software, but also well-crafted software
Not only responding to change, but also steadily adding value
Not only individuals and interactions, but also a community of professionals
Not only customer collaboration, but also productive partnerships

This movement is largely a reaction to offshoring and businesses trying to treat software developers as replaceable cogs. The movement focuses more on individuals and their specific skills. These software craftsmen strive to create not just software that meets spec, but hand-crafted pieces of art.

Seth Godin would be proud.