Is programming an art?

I can’t tell, sometimes it might be.
However, the well known blender coder Anthonis Riakiotakis (PsyFi) is a fine piano player.
Enjoy

Programming and art are seperate skills that augment each other.

A creative coder, can do something with 5 lines of code, which other need pages,

A creative artist can tell a story with a single image,

A coder may try and understand the math behind the madness of art. Yet an artist may try and use chaos to code.

Yeah, however it was a joke.
Anthonis music art is not, in my opinion.

Art is subjective and fluid enough to not be defined,

by you and or anyone else.

It is, but it’s rarely practiced as an art these days. It’s more like paint-by-numbers or those knitting machines that churn out patterned sweaters. :wink:

Sorry,
Wrong post then.
Really sorry.

I agree, but a lot of things traditionally considered art are now subject to being little more than mass produced rehashings of the same old thing. Movies, music, literature, etc…

That in and of itself is still n artform though. Often I find that I really enjoy something out of the ordinary, but the only reason those cookie cutter works are produced is because so many people like them. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy them myself, but I do wish the more adventurous pieces were more common. I suppose it’s hard to take risk with an unproven formula when you’ve got a lot to lose investment wise.

I think that programming is more of a craft than an art. However, I do observe that many of the most talented programmers I have encountered in all of these many (ahem …) years … were either musicians, or music majors.

I think this about sums it up

Only a movie-geek would notice that the dramatic lighting behind Walken’s character in the early shots is not the same as the dramatic lighting in the subsequent close-ups. The bands of light are much narrower.

Certainly! Some people might not consider it as beautiful as, say painting, but I say it is. It’s a difficult skill to master, and if you can, I would definitely consider you an artist.

I could create a web page visually using and application like dreamweaver, is that art? What if I make the same web page by writting the HTML in GEdit, is that not art? I could create a few bezier curves visually in blender and the rendering is art, but what if I created those bezier curves programmatically in my language of choice, is it no longer art?

You’re questionning the tools here. You’re effectively saying; ‘if I painted using “paint”, is it art? If I ‘painted’ using a pencil, is it still art?’ Of course it is, the tool used to create the art bares little significance, it’s a persons ability to use them tools and create ‘artwork’ that bares large significance.

Is programming an art?

Yes, specifically an artform.

a dead shark in formaldehyde -is it art?

@Kurtis: I agree, the programming language is the paint brush, the API is the paint.

@Remade: Now you’re getting into a deeper discussion that has been had many times throughout history, never, to the best of my knowledge, has there ever been a consensus.

Levitated Mass

Is it just a 340 ton boulder or is it art created by artist Michael Heizer and displayed just outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art?

Edit: Maybe I had that wrong, maybe the universe is the canvas and the brain is the paintbrush?

This is a personal definition for art, But art is the point where skill and expression converge. When looking at traditional artists who occasionally make those works that cause our eyes to roll in our heads. They tend to roll because we question their skill, Very seldom when I see something like the boulder example above do I see someone questioning their message.

So is programming an art, I think so sometimes. It has enough tools for expression, But what are you going to say?

I think it’s engineering. And it is creative, but the main goal (most of times) of programming is not to make art, than made practical solutions for problems.

And does art necessarily have to say something? If it says nothing does it still speak, by saying nothing does it in essence say “Must I say something?” So in and of itself a work of art that says nothing is a means to express that particular artists opinion that a work of art need not speak at all.

Perhaps creativity defies logic. Where logic likes things nice and neat, cut and dry, creativity has no boundaries. Art defies logic because logic seeks to define where art cannot be defined.

I think in so many instances I hear artists say they like to push the boundaries, and it’s not the boundaries that define creativity that they set out to push because those boundaries do not exist, it is the boundaries of what they can get away with saying and not face negative public opinion. And really there is a war here, a war that has raged for quite some time. Those who like to push the boundaries and those who like to rein them in.

i found this quote of Bertrand Russell interesting

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.”

Programming does have more in common with engineering and science.
The only problem here is that people don’t rightfully consider engineering and science as art.

Regards,
Ajit Khodke
[TABLE=“width: 404”]

(DCIM Software)

[/TABLE]