From: Tony Arcieri Date: 2010-12-18T03:45:45+09:00 Subject: Re: Is programming art? --0016e6dd97b161c22304979f934d Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 2:51 AM, Yu-Hsuan Lai wrote: > And... after all, ruby is a language which more often be described by "art" > than any other language I know. > Many people call Matsumoto "great designer". I know programming is related > to design. But is it "art"? In my opinion, 99.9% programming isn't art. The primary purpose of art is to communicate ideas between people, often times ineffable ideas that can't be put into language. Art is not intended to be utilitarian and typically has no intrinsic useful function in an of itself. The primary purpose of programming is to accomplish a utilitarian function by providing a set of instructions to a computer. Rather than being ineffable, the instructions are given in very precise language. Ruby has a very flexible syntax that lets people do things solely for aesthetic value, even things that might slow down your code or make it harder to work with. I've often heard people refer to these sorts of things as "poetic" and I like doing them myself. They make no sense when the program is interpreted by a computer, only a human reader. I'd consider that sort of thing artistic. People who write entries for obfuscated code contents often times do fun things with the formatting, making their obfuscated code into pictures and shapes. This is particularly interesting with "quines", programs that can output their own source code. As a response to Paul Graham's "Hackers and Painters" essay, I particularly enjoyed this essay by an artist/programmer, called "Dabblers and Blowhards": http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm -- Tony Arcieri Medioh! Kudelski --0016e6dd97b161c22304979f934d--