Is Programing Art?

Do you consider programming an artistic creative exercise or a logical scientific exercise. I have always thought of programming to be more artistic because, although writing working code is more logical work, but the real effort while writing code is writing good, well-documented code with a predictable structure and design which is much more artistic.

I feel like it's both. Consider the act of writing literature, what are you really doing? You are programming in a bizzare machine language to be run on soykafty biocomputers with unknowable state, read in via tape one token at a time. Executing drawing commands to the framebuffer that is the "minds eye" if you will, inducing a sort of hallucination? (unless the reader has aphantasia)

Is it art to speculate about the nature of art

There's a reason Donald Knuth calls his books the Art of Computer programming and fills them with deep logic. You need art to come up with a solution to a given problem. You need logic to coherently convert a solution into code.

It's pure logic, there is nothing artistic in programming. Even when making art with the result of the code you go for the logical choices, the ones that will get you better performance, better results, better ability to convey the vision you are trying to pull out of your brain with this logic tool.

>>16853 I disagree. Art is anything that a person expresses themselves through, and a person can definitely express themselves through programming, although they are definitely more limited due to the logical nature of computer programming in general.

>>16848 The medium does not define the art. Is it art to paint a wall a plain colour? Anyone with a paint roller and a can of flat white can't just go and say they are an artist. Successfully painting a wall requires no artistic talent. However, developing a technique and achieving optimal results with only reasonable amounts of efforts is at least one step in the general direction of art. Is an experienced painter an artist? Unlikely. Calling one an artisan who excels at his craft is more in touch with reality. Now, is it possible to produce art with paint? Of course. Is an experienced painter more likely to have a better technical grasp on the medium that paint is than someone without experience? Very likely. Can an experienced painter with no artistic talent likely to produce art of acceptable quality using paint? It's possible, but much more unlikely than someone with some artistic talent, but zero experience using paint. Sure, they can (and will) produce mistakes, but real talent shows even through mistakes. >>16853 This is extremely wrong and a soykafty approach to life in general. There is beauty in the simplicity, however efficient, of certain mechanisms. A simple door knob is much more reliable than an electric latch activated by a keycard, yet a keycard is more logical as it includes many features such as finer-grained access control and remote configuration. Sometimes, for a passageway door, you don't need advanced features and the simple doorknob shines in its elegance. Good code is efficient in its operation. Better code is simple to read and understand. Most code spends 99% of its time idling or doing I/O like reading in files and printing output to the console. There is *no* point in writing high-performance code with poor readability when the CPU is basically idle. When I read C++ code (a language almost always praised for its raw performance) I have to uncover layers and layers of abstraction and raw handling of iterators and all sorts of nonsense. I can be thousands of lines deep into code and not have read a *single* line related to the application domain. Switch over to <your favorite trendy functional language> and you see emerge beautiful patterns, never-before-seen concepts of abstraction, half-decent natural language parsers or full-blown domain-specific language compilers implemented in just a few hundreds of lines (of which not a single one is dealing with allocating memory for buffers). Coming up with elegant solutions to tough problems is art. Optimizing an algorithm for raw performance is engineering.

Well, a lot of people learn languages that have little mainstream usage like Haskell or the various Lisps because they see some value in the language itself rather than because they seek industry viability. So I believe that programming can be an art if you want it to be, though most people do not approach it that way. However, the people who identify as "code artisans" are probably the least most likely people to rigidly follow industry standards in order to churn out corporate junk. One problem here is that the computing world changes rapidly, and so people in the future who now have a completely different education and understanding of the discipline will have no way to comprehend what you were trying to do back then. I wonder how tech people in the far future will act with regards to old code. Maybe they will go out of their way to learn completely dead languages and go digging through old Github archives, like how people dig through vinyl crates hoping to find some forgotten piece of genius.

>>16858 >least most most*

>>16858 >digging through decades old code like vinyl records Oh god, no. Save for a few instances, like when that PDP code for the rocket who went on the moon was released, no one wants, or should have the need to read code older than 30 years.

There's pure logic in the result, yes. However, there's a heavy dose of art: https://grisha.org/blog/2013/04/02/linus-on-understanding-pointers/

I know one way to settle this quickly: anyone have any "programming art" they'd like to share with the class?

>>16860 Wrong

Each time I see people musing over whether or not video games, memes and whatever else are arts, I can't help but think our contemporary definition of arts is an outdated relic from the 17th century belonging to the trash, and we should go back to talking about "techne" like the Ancient Greeks, and stop wasting time on such questions. Programming is a craft, like painting or playing guitar. Code can definitely have aesthetic qualities. Now, is that enough to define programming as an art? I think not, because math proofs and food can have aesthetic qualities too. I guess it's time to open some philosophy books about aesthetics if you really want to understand why Duchamp's urinal is art, but not cuisine.

Agreed with aboveposter in that the "current" (read: commonly held) definition of art is outdated and the greek term is way more fitting. I go for a definition also closer to that of eastern traditions. Or perhaps the idea I'm thinking of is actually craft. So it may be art, technique, or craft, it does not matter. Of course aeshetics play a role, but there's a difference in the aesthetics of a computer program, a mathematical proof, or a fresco painting (sorry if that's a redundant phrase). I think the main aspect is the mastery and, to an extent, the creativity or the personal "touch" one imprints on their creation. Anyone can do something harphazardly and without care or attention to detail, and it takes effort to come out with a good, perhaps elegant, or efficient, solution to something. Problem solving may be at the heart of it, as every form of art seems to have some of this. How do you introduce a character in a way that will catch the audience's attention? How to develop the plot in a way that's not linear? When Peter Brueghel painted the fall of Icarus, you can't help but consider why he painted Icarus so small and lost in the middle of an otherwise quotidian scene. And so on. Well I do often consider what's the art of programming, it can be many things of course: resource efficiency (both in memory and cycles, perhaps in communication between elements of the program), economy of expression, elegance, finding the fittest pattern to a task, or best integrating it in the larger scheme of a system, user interfacing, or a clever, perhaps unintuitive solution. All these come to me off he top of my head right now. All things considered, I think the notion of "hacker" precisely conjures this idea of programming as a form of art.

>Can't think of an argument why something is art >>Uh uh uh, the word is the problem. Laziness. Programming is art for a multitude of reasons including form, style, expression of intent, codification of thought, the personification of the logos. It takes the form of poetry and prose, paint or pastel, illusion and concrete. Without inspiration, your code will be muted and free of color. Without style, your code will be corporate trash. Without elegance, your code will be functional yet uninteresting. Anybody who denies the art of code is most definitely somebody who cannot write with any art to their own code. Most people who are inept artists tend to deny the art of others, which is unfortunate they're such spoiled sports.

>>16881 There is no such thing as color, sound, style or elegance in code. And that's ok, it doesn't need to in order to provide the great value it does, "corporate trash" keeps a lot of things ticking in this world.

>>16882 >I deny these things, therefore they don't exist Right...

Logic is an implicit part of the universe, so I disagree with anyone saying it can't be art because (literally) logic. As logic is implicit, Art is also logical. To me the definition of art is is it pragmatic? If a wall needs paint, cover it. If you put extra effort, a picture, or making it flawless a single shade, it's art if you do it intentionally. If you just happen to be really good at painting a white wall flawlessly it's not art, but your form/movements maybe the art. Programming pragmatically is not art. Programming that does extra optimization or fancy techniques for whatever reason is art .

>>16881 >dude muh Scheme s-expressions are like a Beethoven symphony, and if you don't think programming is an art, it is just because you are a dumb Java codemonkey lmao Yes I am actually, and I can confirm you there is no poetry to be found in the pile of soykaf I'm maintaining. What you don't understand is that each time you play this game of arguing that one craft is an art, you are literally redefining what is art. If programming is an art, then I see no reason to exclude of the concept of art any other technical activity who can also have aesthetic qualities at times: lutherie, perfume making, chemical synthesis of organic compounds, chess playing, public speaking, driving fast cars, whatever. I'm sure you can find people who would argue that some of these activities are arts. Consequently, if the concept of arts can include any type of craft and techniques, it's not significantly different from the concept of craft — if it doesn't become actually broader — and therefore it is useless. If everything is art, then art is nothing. That's the sole reason why I make a case against programming as art. I think you are the lazy one here. Your argument basically boil down to "My code is art because I'm enlightened, you are not", and your obscurantist sophistry about "muh expression of intent, codification of thought, the personification of the logos" is not an argument, because mathematics also possess those things, and crafts too except the "codification of thought" part, but music doesn't necessarily possess it either (unless you consider music sheets in themselves as art, and exclude improvisation as an artistic practice) The only point I could extrapolate from your premises in favor of including programming into arts is that, while architecture is an art, most buildings have strictly functional purposes, and a gas station is not a piece of art like the beautiful buildings of Rome and Vienna. This is a case where your opposition between the corporate bloated soykaf I maintain and your artful Scheme macros to distinguish what is art from what isn't art makes sense. However, there is a fundamental difference between architecture and your conception of programming as art. While the end product of architecture is a tangible building existing in time and space, the end product of code is a binary, a string of machine code (or bytecode for a VM), and there is nothing artistic about machine code. What the machine code does can be art (visual art or music), but the machine code in itself is not art, it's just a damn sequence of numbers. If code in itself is art, then all architectural blueprints and music sheets are art in themselves, and then your conception of art gets quite idiosyncratic, to say the least. Do you see where l'm going with this? In order to assert that some type of activity is an art, you first need to define what is art, what isn't, and determine what common characteristics art forms possess. This is a gargantuan task, and many philosophers already wrote thousands and thousands of pages about this, and they all disagree. It's a waste of time. I don't even deny that programming has some similarities with artistic practice, and I'm painfully aware that code can be elegant or ugly, but I think it's a better idea to just acknowledge that aesthetic qualities can appear in many human activities, and to restrict the meaning of art to the commonly held subset of disciplines that is music, drama, poetry, and so on. That way, the limits of the concept of art can become apparent, and maybe we can move on to something else.

>>16893 Your yellowtext differs from the original material in many ways.

>>16881 If you need to put in effort to define what a word means, than yes, the word is the problem. Words describe things, and if nobody can agree what a word means than, by definition, it fails at its job.

>>16898 So it isn't just me who thinks this author is tilting at strawmen. >>16893 I got a good laugh out of your strawman. Thanks. I'm sorry the code you're maintaining isn't art, but that doesn't negate the possibility of code being artistic. You assume these other technical areas don't have some element of art to them also. That assumption is wrong for the same reasons. Just because I (and presumably you) cannot find the merits in these areas doesn't mean they don't exist. I'm lazy for putting forth a vigorous argument. Yes, that makes sense. You're really good at strawmanning, so maybe you're not lazy, just disingenuous. You're starting to get it. Not all paintings are art... apply to all arts. You're assuming the binary representation/final product are themselves art when these are transformations of the textual materials we actually work with. Another strawman. We work in the form and function of source code. Code is art as buildings are art, and no - these two tihngs are not related as you claim. That's a false dichotomy. You're going nowhere fast. Yes, code CAN be ugly and awful, but that doesn't mean it cannot be transcendent and elegant. Read more code and comment less, it'll do you a lot of good.

The lack of concrete examples of the supposed artistic qualities of code is pretty telling. We're all passionate about the subject and of course we see beauty in the skill to make things properly or opening up new ways of thinking but the mental masturbation to consider it an art is not really needed.

>>16902 They were provided earlier in the thread, and you're too daft to look for them. That's a you problem.

>>16848 >Do you consider programming an artistic creative exercise or a logical scientific exercise. Those aren't disjoint. I consider it both. It's not enough that programs should merely work, they should also work well, and being well-written is part of that. Using an appropriate language, picking good names, and using a proper overall design are just three qualities that move a program from merely working to working well. Going further, the addition of constraints has the act stepping more towards artistic, taking all of those already-mentioned qualities and adding the goal of being fundamentally smaller, avoiding some feature, or something else. It's easy to see adding constraints as useless, until something practical comes along making them necessary, and then all of the play and theory about working within them becomes more relevant. Once something is proven in mathematics, that doesn't stop the search for ever more elegant proofs. The elegant proofs are better, even, if they're more easily-understood. >>16863 I'd rather mention the demoscene, which combines more conventional art with technical constraints. A good demo is beautiful in the artistic sense, and technically impressive. The writeups and explanations which occasionally document the code, turning such small programs into impressive displays, is another nicety.

>>16848 If hentai has a right to be called art then anything does

I don't really bother with questions like this because they're ultimately pretty empty of meaning. It just comes down to the web of definitions you use. The definition of "art" that gives me the least friction is its meaning in the phrase "state of the art". I see art as a sort of hidden third leg in the theory/practice dichotomy.

>>20240 In other words, theory, practice, and art are the basic components of creation.

I've thought about this and concluded that, first it does depend, as lain above said, depend on the web of definitions that one uses. Now I think there are two conflicting notions of "art" that I've identified. One is the practitioner's, and the other is the one for the general public. In any discipline the practitioner will consider it's technique as "an art", as can be seen from titles such as "the art of computer programming", "intro to art in '88", "the art of woodworking", "the art and practice of diagnosis in traditional chinese medine", "the art of electronics", all actual titles of documents. This art may be the "bag of tricks" or the tecnnique that goes into performing one's task, I guess the word links to wide knowledge, experience, and intuition and the choice of techniques which the practitioner employs in her strategy, and accounts for the human desire to get better at their craft and also the continuum of skill that people show in their work. This is the notion that I most often hold. And then the view of the general public, that it is something of immediate appeal to the senses. It can even be completely devoid of skill as attested by "modern art". Anyway, the practitioner's definition of art appeals only to the aesthetic sense of the practitioner herself, which is learned and based upon a knowledge of the effort and techniques required. The "fine arts", on the other hand, appeal to the immediate aesthetic of the senses and emotions they generate. Interestingly, the art of painting (for example) becomes a matter of technique for those who paint, instead of just the surface result (which is still relevant to them, but only as an end, the means being the substance of the art). One interesting difference is that the arts of the senses are generally an end product, something that exists merely for it's aesthetics, whereas the product of an art in the broader sense (say, programming) is itself a useful tool (some software, say, a CAD system) to develop something else (a machine). You might argue architecture produces buildings which are themselves useful things, however the aesthetic o buildings is but coating on top of the structure and bears no real relevance to it's use. You might say that dance, music, scenic arts al, serve a political/educational purpose, but it's still not really a tool, though in the realm of the socio-political there is more leeway as to the usefukness of aesthetic art. In the end, asking whether something is "a work of art" depends on who you ask, but if you are to ask people at large, the question will most likely be no.Your clever way of shaving a goat is not something that'll take you to broadway or find it's way to an art gallery.

>>16902 > The "lack of examples" on this thread proves irrefutably that is indeed not art I think is common sense to see programming as art. A soykafty one, not as great as painting, but art nonetheless.

>>16848 >Do you consider programming an artistic creative exercise or a logical scientific exercise. I believe people who treat it as a logical scientific exercise write more maintainable code. Artists are always seeking to impress with their clever constructs, which only makes the code harder to follow and maintain. It's like a 2009 thinkpad. It's not pretty, but it's easy to repair. The MS Surface might be thin/light/beautiful, but if anything breaks on it, the whole thing is suddenly garbage.

>>16848 Knowing that art, beauty, perfection and usefulness are all subjective to the observer and are philosophical by nature, i personally consider art as being simply an idea that has reached it's perfect form. I see beauty in well crafted code and i see perfection inside the complexity in which computers are crafted for the sole purpose of being useful and (almost) infinitely reliable.

Code is as much art as writing is. If intent, elegance, aesthetic, or etc. is put into it it can be as much art as anything else. Otherwise its a BuzzFeed article.

>>16863 http://uguu.org/src_misaka_c.html Although it's not exactly the kind of art that I think OP intended, it's still pretty cool. Some other code written for that competition can be found here: https://www.ioccc.org/years-spoiler.html

>>16863 http://uguu.org/src_misaka_c.html Although it's not exactly the kind of art that I think OP intended, it's still pretty cool. Some other code written for that competition can be found here: https://www.ioccc.org/years-spoiler.html

What about as some of the early posters alluded to that art can't be something that is interacted with. Putting paint on a canvas isn't any more art than putting words on a page whether it be code or literature. It's what people do with it afterwards that's important. Programming often results in interactive programs. A shovel isn't going to be art if it's going to be used. Are carved dragon in the handle is art but the whole things being used isn't. You could absolutely create some art with programming just look at demoscene. Anything that's going be interacted with won't be art but it can be appreciated from a mastery of creation point of view.

I think it's dumb to debate what is and isn't a thing because it's a man-made problem. Things are what they are according to your senses. The words we use to describe them are merely abstractions that make them easier to describe to others.

>>23794 That seems like a very arbitrary rule.

>>23794 Why are interactive or useful things not art? I think what you're thinking about is the category of 'fine art', which is non-applied art. There also exist the categories of 'decorative art' and 'applied art'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_arts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decorative_arts Are buildings, furniture, clothes, websites etc. not art, even when they're made with beauty in mind? And of course there's video games, which can convey a narrative like any other audiovisual medium can. The way I see it, the product (a piece of software) can be art in depending on what that product is, while the process (coding) is just the process. In the same way that the act of putting lines on paper isn't art, but the final product might be.

>>23794 By looking at something you are interacting with it, otherwise a painting couldn't, for example, leave a viewer feeling melancholy. Engaging with art is an interactive process even if you aren't interacting with your hands. >>24069 I think this sort of misses the mark too. For example dance leaps out as an obvious artform in which there isn't any distinction between process and product. We might also look to Calligraphy as a case where the art is as much in the product as in the process as well.

>>16874 This has been my feeling on art for a long time. You can see vestiges of the "techne" sense of "art" in English through phrases like "state of the art", which hint at a deeper meaning behind the word than merely relating to aesthetics. It's about technique and craft and the upward thrust of man's achievements. It is spiritual in nature, which perhaps explains why we've been lead astray by simple aesthetics, which are like junk food for the soul.

>>24079 This seems correct, but good luck having such a view given any consideration in a materialistic/productivistic culture.

>>24081 I've talked about it with people before. I've tried to explain that art is about pouring the mind of a man into an object to make it something more. I've talked about how when you are driven to create you become almost possessed, like your work is willing itself into existence through you. Very few people understand and they instead point out how much they like masturbating to pretty things as evidence that I'm wrong. It's incredibly depressing.

>>24079 >>24082 The issue with your poetic approach to philosophy is that it raises a bunch of questions with answers that only raise more questions. For example: -What do you define craft and technique as? Are they the same thing? If not, how do they differ? -What do you mean by "the upward thrust of man's achievements"? -When you say that art is spiritual in nature, do you mean it a literal, religious sense, or are you being poetic and metaphorical? If it's the latter, what do you mean by it, and either way how do you know it to be true? -What's wrong with simple aesthetics? This also implies that complex aesthetics are superior, so what makes them good? -How is art "about pouring the mind of a man into an object to make it something more?" -What does "when you are driven to create you become almost possessed, like your work is willing itself into existence through you" mean? -What's wrong with masturbating to pretty things?

>>24082 >art is about pouring the mind of a man into an object to make it something more. >when you are driven to create you become almost possessed yes. absolutely. this is exactly how i feel sometimes when coding, and it's the best feeling in the world.

>>16848 >Is Programing Art? Depends. Do you consider a single file with 25K LoC of random copy paste JavaScript stored in a single JSON object art?

>>27412 >Do you consider a single file with 25K LoC of random copy paste JavaScript stored in a single JSON object art? Do you consider it programming?

>>24079 >>24082 Very accurate. It is unlike anything else, programming can be art like this guy describes >>27411. >>24089 Not him but if you can't 'get' what he's describing then you just haven't come close to enough to creating art. This is no easy feat, you must spend years aquiring a high level of skill where you can cause the 'upward thrust of human achievement'. It becomes second nature and the creation overcomes you to give you this 'spiritual' feeling. I can't tell you what 'spiritual' feels like, you have to experience a spiritual moment. I'd try step outside your pedantic stemlord outlook and try appreciate the meaning of his post rather than the definitions of words in the post directly.

>>27418 >stemlord I'm 100% self-taught. Anyway, I'm not interested in flowery "you don't get it, man" spiritual bullshit. Either you can define it in concrete terms, or it's not worth discussing.

>>27419 Not him but it's kinda like discussing, let's say love. You can say that you feel butterflies in your stomach, or that you can't sleep at night cause you think about that person, but unless you experience it, you will never know what he is talking about. For all the possible definitions of attraction, I only really understood what it meant when a lady in a stockings and miniskirt walked towards me while we exchanged dumb grins with each other. And fighting about definition is weird. You'll never find a perfect definition for anything (pic related) because that's not how language is structured. Words are more like arrows that point to some general idea, yet never capture it fully. No one really can define a chair. You might say it's a place to sit, but I can imagine a chair that you can't sit on, because for the fun of it, it is hollow. You might say it's an object of 4 legs, then one might call elephant a chair. You can go on forever like that, yet all of us know a chair when we see one.

>>27420 Love is a chemical reaction. Any truly informative discussion on the nature of love will start from there and work its way outward. Describing it as you did feels nice, but it's also very shallow. You don't learn much from it.

kek >>27415 there is a certain beauty in a machine that is exceptionally good at what it does. if it does it elegantly and simply. its not the same as true art like a cathedral or painting which represents ordered reality/nature. programs are pure order and logic. some are better than others in their design, but there is nothing they represent aside from their own order. i would say they are not art.

>>27422 >Love is a chemical reaction It is, but not just. It's like saying ships are just wooden planks, colonies are just ants, and forest are just trees. If you think you aren't missing anything by stating that than you have to think about it. Secondly, and this go for all emotions. They aren't just chemical popping in your head. It's like saying hapiness is when you have dopamine. If we trully believed that we would all just become crack addicts since not much would compare to that. Yet we don't consider junkies who don't know what is happening around them fullfilled people even if they recieve more dopamine than you or me do. Lastly, in the end doesn't it make more sense to see what you experience as more pure? You can easily doubt the whole world, just think you are mentally ill and have trouble seeing reality or you are in a simulation or whatever, (not that you should, because while in someways possible, so technically is that an unicorn will crash into your house) but you can never doubt yourself or your feelings. To what should we put more importance? Our direct experience or models, that aren't really about the world itself but about what we have filtered through our senses?

>>16848 Threads like these are why I like lainchan. Art is expression, and in a way many sciences are a type of art. Engineering for example, considering it's elegance. As an engineering-science-like-discipline computer science can be considered it's own kind of art, especially when it's used for artistic purposes like generative music (https://eulerbeats.com/about). Mathematics like e^(iπ)+1 = 0 are beautiful, and can in themselves be considered a type of art as well. Even a campbells soup can or a shopping trip can be considered art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSkz4vATkQE These samples of APL i feel really demo the artistic-engineering meta of programming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DTpQ4Kk2wA What even is art? I don't know, but I love CS so much, and I think it many ways it is a kind of art in some abstract sense. (please check out the urls if they don't embed, I promise they're very worth it).

>>27415 >Do you consider it programming? Not necessarily programming but maintaining garbage code is indeed some kind of art.

>>27425 I'm not saying that emotions are worthless. They give meaning and motive in a world where there otherwise would be none. But they're also subjective and personal. If you want to find universal truths, you can't let yourself get too emotional.

>>16848 it's a craft. the quicker people realize this the better. although there can be some kinds of artistic programming, the best programmers are craftsmen, iteratively improving their code, polishing it into a smooth pebble.

No. I see a lot of people saying "programming is art". No. Programming is purely logical. The goal of every programmer should be to make the most optimized program possible. "Programming is art" is just a rational for creating imperfect programs. What annoys me is, people will attribute "artistry" to anything, thinking it makes them sound smart. Art is for non-logical areas such as culture and religion, and art can only come from those things. Programming is entirely logical, no exceptions. Jackson Pollock's soykaf-stains aren't art and that's a fact. >Programming is expression and expression is art That's a low bar for "art". No, programming is not expression. All "expression" comes from some form of configuration. And art is expression, but expression is not art. This post is not "art". >Programming can be beautiful and beauty is art Yes, programming can be beautiful, and art can be beautiful, but that does not make everything that is beautiful into art.

>>27447 >Jackson Pollock's soykaf-stains aren't art and that's a fact. That's a very strange thing to tack on. Especially with the "and that's a fact part". You're implying that there's a factual, scientific basis in his art not being art, which is arguable at best.

>>27455 I just felt the need to tack it on because the type of people who would call programming art are the same people who think Jackson Pollock makes "art".

Pollock's art will always be art as long as there's someone still around to be pissed off by it

It doesn't have to be one or the other. Is code golf or the obfuscated C competition art? Are esoteric languages art? I mean, look at Piet (programming language), it's literally code you could put in an art gallery and it wouldn't be out of place. Is creating and optimizing a logical program to achieve a business goal a cold logical exercise. I'd say it sure can be. Consider the debate about Linerider. Is it a game? An artistic tool? A physics sandbox? The answer is yes. It just depends how you use it.

>>27458 You didn't need to tack it on, and you also shouldn't have. Including anything beyond your core point is poor debate skills.

Art is a spook. It's been 2021 and we still can't come up with a coherent definition of what art is, let alone what makes it good.

>>27459 trolling is a art

>>27484 >Don't you mean AN art?

>>16848 Art is basically wasting time and resources in creative and difficult to replicate ways. The purpose is to signal surplus time, wealth and unique genetic traits to potential mates. On a meta level people follow art as a way to signal that they are smart or sensitive enough to "get" the art or artist. Since girls generally don't give a fuarrrk about technology or computers, programming is a very ineffective form of art.

Programming is closer to a craft than an art.

>>16848 just like all other art, there's the surface level and the deeper meaning. Surface level would be the structure of the code and the deeper meaning what actually is happening. But you can state for certain what a program does unlike a work of art where, lets be honest I doubt most artists (are writers included?) look that deep into their work. Only the general consensus of a community can decide what is and isn't art and if that fails its better to disappoint everyone

I think programming has least artistic aspects out of all creative task, simply for the fact that it doesnt allow abstracts, everything is logical and structured. Doesnt mean you cant make art with code or use it in an artistic style. But in the end even stuff like brainfuck cant be considered art, really there aint all that much artistic stuff you can do.

>>27531 I really wonder if people like you are even capable of navigating the world outside their front door, or ever talk to other human beings offline. If I could go back in time and assassinate anyone it would be Moot, not that he's so awful, but to prevent what he inadvertently spawned when he created 4chan.

> Computer, so-called "Science", has a lot of common with magic. Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J_xL4IGhJA&list=PLE18841CABEA24090&index=3&t=17s

I remember there being a similar conversation here on the same subject, or it might have been the OP lamenting on how programming feels so disconnected from the world and other fields since it is so young and specialized. Can anyone find the thread or know what I'm talking about? I'm asking here because I'd rather not kill a thread just for this question and the topics are at least a little bit related.

>>16848 No. Because I can check your program and objectively prove if it works or not. Same with math, your hypothesis can be objectively wrong, you can't just make stuff up. You can have taste in considering some programs beautiful and others not so much. But the objectivity aspect makes me not consider it art.

>>33517 Having an objective purpose doesn't make something not art. Art exhibits often do have objective, verifiable purposes that are interwoven with whatever subjective qualities the artist cares about.

>>33523 How are they verifiable? Do artists tell the people what the point of an artwork is? People may not see it the same way and derive completely different meaning because of their unique interpretation, would that mean that the artist failed in their objective?

>>33529 >How are they verifiable? Depends on the art installation. Perhaps the simplest and least controversial would be a statue of a real human. There is an objective end goal: a stone that looks like a person, yet the sculptor is still recognized as an artist. Portrait artists are similar as well - there may be subjective goals There are installations with objectives of producing something with some objective quality, but with certain limitations that require creative workarounds. Long palindromic poems, for instance, must be palindrome, but there are subjective aspects to them as well. Haiku, too. Some art installations even feature mechanical work. The most accessible are probably rube goldberg machines - there's an objective end goal, often something small, but a subjective goal of accomplishing it in an entertaining way through many cool mechanisms. >Do artists tell the people what the point of an artwork is? Sometimes. >People may not see it the same way and derive completely different meaning because of their unique interpretation, would that mean that the artist failed in their objective? Sometimes, but that doesn't necessarily matter either. If a portrait artist sets out to paint someone and they end up with a painting that is beautiful but doesn't look like the subject, then they failed in their objective, but most people would still consider the painting art.

>>33543 >there may be subjective goals I accidentally deleted the rest of the sentence: >there may be subjective goals but the main goal is an accurate likeness

>>21734 >Artists are always seeking to impress with their clever constructs, which only makes the code harder to follow and maintain. I agree with this. Art is a form of conspicuous consumption. The artist is trying to signal creativity and spare time by working on something with no functional value or minimized functional value. Things like the obfuscated C contest, code golf and quines are example of programming as an art. The functionality of these programs, if any, is not at all the point. The point is to show off how the artist is clever and creative and rich (by virtue of wasting time). >>33529 >How are they verifiable? When effort outstrips utility in a way that is easy for others to appreciate but difficult for them to imitate. That's when an attempt at art was made.

well... i was replying to this but then it said "go away spammer" when i hit post. last try

>>33529 > Do artists tell the people what the point of an artwork is? very many artworks are made on commision, artist enacting the will of some patron or other. Even today, this is the case often... unrelatedly; I chaffe at the notion that art is neccisarily without much utility, all manner of practical things are described as art, foods, tools, software has been mentioned here, clothes etc. I think art has more to do with skillfullness, and especially creative novelty.

Writing code is a craft. Like any craft that exists to create good things, there's artisanship and workmanship involved. Maybe its my blue collar background (I only do computers as a hobby), but I don't see a conflict. The youth of computing compared to trades like metalworking or agriculture might mean programmers haven't fully incorporated the art with the science yet. Blue collar workers are immersed in a culture with hundreds of years of best practice and transmission of tradecraft from generation to generation, software eNgiNeErs will get there someday. One of the reasons I like UNIX, despite its flaws, is that its old enough to have accumulated some practices, culture, and craftsmanship.

I think the use of "artisana.lly" is triggering the filter for the guy who is obsessed with buttholes since it ends with ana.lly

>>33579 Meant this as a reply for >>33573

>>33543 >If a portrait artist sets out to paint someone and they end up with a painting that is beautiful but doesn't look like the subject, then they failed in their objective, but most people would still consider the painting art. This was my point tho. If I'm making a program with a clear objective and I fail, what value does it have? Will people have their own interpretations of my broken program that doesn't even work? Can a piece of art not work? >but difficult for them to imitate. That's when an attempt at art was made. You can make a very simple piece of music that requires very little technical skill and evoke great deal of feelings and thoughts. You can appreciate something just because it was difficult to make but that doesn't mean it will resonate on a deeper level than something that was very easy to make. Difficulty is not a requirement for it to be considered art, the end result is what matters the most.

>>33574 >very many artworks are made on commision, artist enacting the will of some patron or other. Even today, this is the case often... I don't know what point you're trying to make, the commissioned art can be interpreted the same way as other art, some people will think it works and some won't.

>>33587 >some people will think it works and some won't. Bah I dont think this is neccisarily the case. Say I hire someone to decorate some object of mine, put a carving on some scales for a knife or whatever. It has a pretty narrow audience (myself, maybe my family, some friends, you know), it has some requirements say I ask him to draw a dragon, and it ought to look good. If I think it does the job, if the other audiencemen (which is testable here because its small and relatively bounded) think it does the job, then it bloody well does the job. What do you care if some chinese guy complains that dragons dont look like that, or some hipster a thousand years later says it doesn't actually look that cool in his opinion? the artist has done his job, just as the guys who wrote vi and vim have done their jobs pretty decently even if emacs shi//s and ide users disagree.

>>33586 >If I'm making a program with a clear objective and I fail, what value does it have? A program may still have appealing subjective qualities despite having bugs. The code may look clean or the architecture and abstractions may seem well done (whatever that means to the subjective observer). Maybe the approach is novel or clever and that holds more subjective value to the viewer than the output. Tangentially related, maybe the code is a artwork of comedy and not working is an important feature of the artistic presentation. >Will people have their own interpretations of my broken program that doesn't even work? Yes, people who read the code will have different opinions on how it's structured, organized, the patterns used, etc. >Can a piece of art not work? Sure.

>>33517 >I can check your program and objectively prove if it works or not. You can see if a building works or not. Has it fallen over, how easy is it to use, does it make efficient use of resources, etc... Yet architecture still seems to be art. Your critical mistake is the assumption that the presence of an objective purpose precludes any other form of expression. As the simplest example, a sorting algorithm. bubble_sort x = { for i from len(x) - 2 to 0 { for j from 0 to i { swap(&x[i], &x[i + 1]) if x[i] > x[i + 1] } } } stooge_sort x = { if len(x) == 2 { swap(&x[0], &x[1]) if x[0] > x[1] } else if len(x) > 2 { let y = len(x) / 3 let z = ceil(y*2) stooge_sort(x[0..z]) stooge_sort(x[floor(y)..len(x)]) stooge_sort(x[0..z]) } } Even on a small scale, the implications of each of these bits of code are quite different. You might say that this is just interesting, it isn't art. I would argue art makes people think and feel, so thinking is half way there. The second piece of code is unexpected, arguably pointless when the first exists. It makes you wonder about why it was put there. You might find it funny, or you might look down on it if it happens in a more formal context. Funny is a good bit of the way towards the feeling side as well. Personally, I've looked at some pieces of code and found them beautiful and some others disgusting. Sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me angry. You can get most of the feelings you could from other art out of code. Most critically, I would say that code is written by a human. The basis of art is looking at something a human has done and wondering what they were thinking when they did it. To me that is what makes art distinct from something that is merely impressive. It isn't just accomplishment, it isn't just doing the thing it has to, it is also expression. You can tell who wrote it because it has style. That sounds like art to me.

>>33586 >Can a piece of art not work? lol if you worked with artists you'd know there's all sorts of failures in their eyes. maybe not in some areas but many 'arts' are full of technical skill, things that can go wrong, this even before the audience may see the fruit.

>>33595 >in their eyes I have seen many good paintings that the artist himself thought it was a failure. I have never seen a good software when it was considered a failure.

>>33603 >I have seen many good paintings that the artist himself thought it was a failure. I have never seen a good software when it was considered a failure. Bullshit I've seen a lot of software that 'works' well enough but where the programmer is unsatisfied, wishes he was able to do something differently, thinks this or that bit didn't come out right. Especially if its done for a company they just want it to work and usually a way will be made to make it work, but there are CS grad students who spend decades trying to get something to be 'good' in their eyes, even though it probably has 'worked' by most objective standards for years. Lets think about something a little less abstract than painting, take sculputre. Say you've got an artist trying to make a big bronze statue, mutli part, lets say a portrait statue of a specific man. Its got a lot of steps, and a lot of technical skill. First he makes a sculpture in say wax or foam, eventually satisfied with it he breaks it apart into peices that can be more easily cast. Each one of those needs to be moulded and then each of the moulds gets cast with bronze. After that he needs to remove the castings from the moulds, and then weld them together correctly and then clean up, polish up and otherwise finish. There's a lot of places for things to go truly and objectively wrong here, casting and removal from casts, welding, etc. At the end of the day assuming the technical aspects go right, the artist might still think he needs to work on his ears or how he didn't get the posture quite how he wanted or all manner of quibbles, but these are failures of a different sort.

>>33607 >programmer is unsatisfied That is different from being a failure. An incomplete painting can still be considered a painting(look up The Adoration of the Magi by Da Vinci), an incomplete software just doesn't work. It fails to work. It's a complete failure and can't not be sold as a software at all.

>>33608 >an incomplete software just doesn't work Absurd! so many useful wip software projects out there, missing planned features, with parts that don't work quite correct, that are perpetually being changed and tinkered with. Not finished, but functional. Perhaps never to be truly finished. This is a major complaint I've heard leveled at the creators of softwares...the frequency of never completed projects, inabilities of creators to say they are satisfied and call it done.

>>33608 Software contractors have deadlines to meet and will put incomplete projects on the market rather than be late. It happens all the time.

>>33610 There is no done in software unfortunately. Unless you are working on an extremely small scale. Humans make errors, humans want different features, humans are the root of the problem but at the same time are the only ones who can make software. It's a sick jest by the gods of mathematics and computation.

>>33896 this is true for a huge number of things though, practically every complicated system. There's always some rough edges to clean up, the weakest subsystem that could be improved, blades that could be sharper, gears that could be harder, paragraphs that could be made smoother and more logical, yadda yadda. software is like this sure, but so is basically everything else if you let it be. Software is simply especially easy to continue to work on. A pizza you bake and can't really fix it any more, a novel gets published, a bridge gets built and then is being used and its not sensible to adjust further without great cost / inconvenience. Software on the other hand, the programmer makes a copy and sends to the user, but the programmer keeps forever access to that unbaked pizza, and gets to spend the rest of his life arranging the cheese so that its perfectly symmetrical if he so wishes, even years after the deadline.

>>33897 But that applies to almost every science. What you're describing is the difference between sciences and arts. If I as an engineer design a windmill lets say. It gets patented and distributed, as long as I have the knowledge of how it works I can always make a new one, or optimize it somehow. Arts are different, like novels, and in your example pizzas.

The question of "what is art?" is inherently ontological. To say "is x art?" is asking too much in this case I think. A lot of the answers given talk about the mathematical aspect excluding it from being art. But that presupposes that anything "art" cannot include mathematics. The point is that every claim of whether it is or isnt art depends on its a priori justification that may or may not seem reasonable to the reader. A reasonable discussion of whether a claim to either direction (or its negations) obtains will be a challeging pursuit to say the least within this environment. Especially when presented with bait all around and hardly any coherent claims around. I mean arguing is hard, especially coherent metaphysical arguing. Hell, even arguing that arguing is hard is hard. That said, I will gladly contribute my subpar somewhat coherent "opinion". When I see 8½ by Federico Fellini I see film art. I see a coherent theme: autonomy. Every character tries to establish its autonomy. But the finale is what brings it all together: one cant be autonomous alone - we have to do it together. Beautiful I think. When I see beauty in teleological human creation I see art (I think). Can a program be beautiful? I think so. Some working implementation written in an unconventional style though feeling exactly right when reading it is beautiful I think. Picking the right paradigm, the right layers of separation of concerns, the right naming convention, etc. Art is IMO vehicle independent. It is about how the vehicle is applied. Fellini could not have made an art film without it being able to be seen, it would not be a film. If a program does not run it is not a program, so it cannot be a piece of programming art. Just the activity of programming tho, like the activity of film making or [insert occupational activity] is not "art". Its labor and (I agree with Aristotle here) labor is disgusting, but an unfortunate necessity when some beautiful idea is to be realized.