Non-traditional art forms
I am largely a self taught developer, and have been for about 14 years now. You should read this as I actually like what I do and yes, I would continue to program even if I had no financial responsibilities. Lucky for me, programming, especially as an independent consultant pays quite well, well enough to keep the lights on and the kids fed at least.
I studied Mathematics and Physics in University, and I tended to be attracted to those types of hard sciences much more than any soft sciences. Not that I think all soft sciences are crap, it is just the way my brain is oriented I think. People who know me would describe me as very logical, a ‘list’ guy, and a steady, get it done sort of guy; this has always been so, even in high school I would tend to break everything down, analyze it and do fairly well academically, except in English where for some reason I was pegged as a ‘78%’ guy, whether I put in a tonne or effort, or nearly none. I think the 70 year old English lady who taught English just figured that is as high as the captain of the football team should every be able to achieve in English – screw her.
What I am getting at is what I never saw myself as is an artist – sure I have an ear for music and played in some bands, but I was never a star. Traditional art, say drawing and sketching I am often bettered by my 8 year old daughter (who does have talent). Decorating I could really care less, but the one time I took the reigns and decorated a space, everybody loved it, currently I leave all the colour choices up to my wife, who does excel at this sort of thing and people often mistake our house as having been done professionally.
Over the last few years though I have come to accept, and advertise the fact that I really do think I have an artistic gift that is for programming. If you think programming can not be an art, that is fine and can be your opinion, but I would suggest that you either:
- Don’t love programming enough OR
- Don’t have enough experience
My recent roles (say over the past 5-7 years) have included roles like team leader, mentor, or framework designer. Basically I do a lot of code review, and although I acknowledge that all programmers have their own unique style (like a signature), there is a lot of very crappy code out there, in terms of:
- Actual logical structure
- Lack of standards
- Poor formatting or formatting standards
- Poor or non-existent organization or standards
- Poor implementation or lack of accepted programming patters
Notice that all items, save maybe the last item regarding patterns do not rely on one’s experience or time coding, they can all be applied right from the start, no matter where you are in your career. Ugly (non-artistic) coders argue (correctly) that in large part after the compiler (any modern one at least) gets done crunching the high level code, it really doesn’t make a difference. This is correct from a performance issue, but there are a few things of importance that override this, especially for enterprise projects where you have at least several people responsible for the development and maintenance of a code base, they include:
- The ability to read and comprehend code
- The ability to debug code
- The ability to enhance code
- The unconscious ability to create or add quality code
These factors, when calculated as part of the overall cost can easily be worth the extra time it takes to do that little bit of standard formatting, or commenting. The largest thing I feel as a coding artist is the general disgust I feel when I open up a class written that does not meet my standards. I feel like I will almost be polluted somehow by even touching it, and if I really don’t want to spend the time resolving and turning said class into a piece of art, I will tend to program down to that standard, as why place a diamond amongst a pile of coal?
In the end, I now am proud to call myself an artist – a code artist – and am proud of my work, my growth, and my openness to learn from my equally talented associates.
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