Is Coding Art

I was recently asked this question and after lengthy contemplation I have to argue that as most people practice it no, it is not art.

I am not trying to take away from the great works of these people. Far from it. Being ‘art’ is just a label. It doesn’t make it better or worse than anything else.

So why am I stating that most code is not art? It comes down to a few reasons:

• The act of writing source code is creative, but it is not the finished work.
• The finished work for most languges (except for raw machine code and some interpreted languages) is not the work of the coder but actually the result of the compiler, the coder generally can't predict what exact form the output from the input will be, only the function.
• The only form we can really judge the creator on is the user interface (and perhaps the resource requirements (64k code competitions for example)), but this is very different from putting pigment on canvas or other similar processes we easily define as 'art'.
• If we are only able to judge the creators code on the function and not the form, then it isn't art. It is creative but not art as such.

This last points I think is the important ones. Building architecture is a hybrid of art (form) and engineering (function) and I think we should look at programming from a similar perspective.

Modern architecture uses a lot of computer assistance to design a building; from calculating loads and resource requirements to in some cases designing the actual form of the building itself with only minor tweaks from the architect. This is a very wide range and we accept that (although arguments still exist both ways).

So can programming be art? I think so, especially where the source code itself is the output. Take ‘Brain fuck’ language is a little less clear cut as the language is still compiled, but the only real use is the challenge of writing or understanding the code. I suppose in this context it could be looked at as performance art, except that generally you are performing alone.