Disclaimer: I love programming.
The other day Meza went to great length discovering the nature of programming. His conclusion is that programming is art.
I beg to differ.
I don't think carpenters and painters are the same. Neither are musicians and programmers. Silence and a problem to be solved are not the same. A painter wants to say or to show something, and then the audience can decide whether or not they like it.
A programmer is presented with a problem, and they go about solving it. It's not an empty canvas, it's not what the programmer has to tell the world. There is nothing artsy about it. It's creative, it's rewarding, but it's not art.
There is however a great deal of craftsmanship involved.
Now. Not all crafts are the same. A plumber for example is pretty much bound by the way a pipeline can run, by the placement of the bathtub or the mainline. He has quite little room to maneuver. A carpenter on the other hand only has to make sure that the table's surface more or less flat, or not even that.
A programmer is as free as it gets. Software is called soft for a reason. Not a single element of the program to be written is bound by anything other than the programmer's mind. And now you might think I'm exaggerating. Think again.
The greatest thing about being a programmer is that you can solve a problem literally in thousands of ways. You can even create your own tools while at it. I know of no other craft that you can say the same about. And that's why I love programming.
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