In your search for achieving excellence in creating software you might have come across one of these statements that ‘code is an art’ or something in that fashion. Although these statements are very appealing, I believe it not to be true. I will explain why. First let’s start with the reasons why a computer programmer (or coder) is considered an artist and it’s product (code) art. Writing code is labour intensive and various attempts have been made to automise the coding process through the use of high-level visual languages or application-generator tools. They all fail. Why is this? Because writing code is a complex and, most importantly, creative process. The same reasoning explains why there are still no good pop-song-generating software or fancy automatic movie generating applications. Maybe this will come one day, but this area is still in its very early infancy. Still, the coder can be considered an artist because he or she is creating a product through an undeterministic and creative process where the exact outcome is not clear upfront. Just like musicians or novelists. So, if writing code can be compared to creating music, writing a novel or painting … then why can the code not be considered an art? Music certainly is art, and so is a well-written novel. The important, but subtle, difference is this:
_The value of art is determined by the art itself. Whereas the value of code is not determined by the code itself_.
To restate: a painting is perceived beautiful based on the painting itself. Music is valued via the music itself. In contrast, a software product is not valued on the code itself, but on what it does. No user really cares whether you have an elegent recursive call, or a three-tier architecture. Software should work. We should never forget this. Surely, your colleagues may be impressed by the sheer elegance of your code, but your users certainly won’t be! The goal of a musician and its audience are aligned: to create beautiful music. The goal of a coder and its audience is not, there is a clear mismatch and that makes it more difficult to create good software. Most programmers out there, if not all, enjoy writing beautiful and elegant code. Which is a good thing because elegant code tends to have other convenient properties such as easy maintenance, reusability, self-documenting, etc. But let’s not forget that this is not the primary goal our users have; just create software that works.
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