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- Glyph didn't convince me. (And I'm biased; I've sat in multiple sessions given by his dad 20 years ago about creating good code.)
Code can be pretty, but I don't consider it art. Just like I don't consider technical documentation art.
I much prefer being able to talk to my computer and tell it to make a Stream Deck plugin to control the lights in my office and create a weather app (and show the precipitation forecast on the buttons) in 10 minutes, rather than me futzing around for two days to create something similar. Or to create the world's first(?) Telemark ski game from my Strava dumps in 30 minutes.
Admittedly, my book and course sales are down quite a bit (which I would mostly blame on AI). I'm not sure what the future holds, but change and adaptation have been pretty constant in my 25+ year career.
I do have concerns about what the minimal knowledge requirements will be for product development in the future.
- Programming as an art form always reminds me of the Einstein quote; "Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas". Both are just art forms you cannot appreciate without some understanding of it. Arguably thats true of all art actually, its just that the more familiar forms, like painting or music, can be understood at a basic level without an understanding, whereas mathematics and programming are essentially alien to the casual observer.by bodge5000
- Mel's famous chess demo is undeniably a work of art. It was also completely unmaintainable. There's a tension between artistic expression and fulfilling business requirements. One could argue that `deferred` is good because it lowers cognitive complexity and makes fulfilling business requirements easier. Whether or not it qualifies as "artistic" or "beautiful" is entirely incidental.
There's also the unfortunate matter that most software is closed source. All most will ever see is the user interface and the API surface. While I am a believer in art for art's sake, I don't think you can blame programmers for feeling like the bottom of a filing cabinet behind a locked door isn't the best place for artistic expression. Perhaps, one could argue, what's more important is the finished product and the impact it has on the world. (Obviously this doesn't apply to actual creative-coding hobbyist spaces, ex: the demoscene, game jams, etc.)
That said, compassionate coding, good documentation/comments/names, and solid architectural design are all vital in software development. This fundamentally requires more care and attention than automated vibe-coding tends to provide. But these qualities are still possible to achieve in an AI-assisted workflow. It's a question of striking the balance between fulfilling business requirements, not alienating developers, ensuring code quality, and limiting the fallout of giving boatloads of cash and political power to AI corporations.
by InvisibleUp - > Artists understand that AI is bad for art. Why don’t programmers understand that we are artists?
Because the vast majority of programmers are bad artists, they just did programming for money. Only few actually cared about true craftsmanship, readability for every level of programmers while maintaining maximum efficiency, true passionate programming or quality open-source without caring how much money earn. AI makes bad artists the best as they don't care the taste but quantity. Same applies for bad programmers.
by dumindunuwan - I've been programming for 30 years professionally, and I did it for a hobby as a kid. I love it still, but I am having more fun than I ever did before because none of the drudgery that goes along with it is required anymore. I love the AI and I wouldn't be sad if I never had to write another line by hand. But it's been my job, and the thing I've always hated about the job is that I didn't just get to leave it at work. My mind is always on it even when other people have shut down for a weekend or a weeklong vacation. I always have to worry about that next project that still isn't done, or isn't making an much progress while I'm away. Not as much now, because I just have to check in on Claude when I think of something I missed or need to do for some upcoming thing. It really takes away a lot of my stress because I can use it to extract action items from meetings, it help sketch designs, and write all the damned unit tests for me. Life is better now.by aldousd666
- I have been programming for 16 years now. I am glad AI arrived because I was getting sick of it anyway. You can’t call Art a form of plumbing different blocks together with business glue logic. It just highlights that we were plumbing all those frameworks and tools together in order to produce piece of code that businesses or individuals are willing to pay for.
When I was a junior developer I did see programming as an art but I really don’t see it anymore. What is important is the output. And does the output is in accordance to its design and functions as intended.
You can produce great software with any code or programming languages that you can think of. Some tools and practices produce them faster and/or with higher quality and correctness.
You can replicate the same product with almost any programming language now and good software practices now. AI makes the writing process a breeze but doesn’t solve what is art: the design and the vision (why and what). Therefore I think you can’t call the process of production an art. It’s really not that special.
- I am a programmer who likes aesthetics. I think about how aesthetic it is to not have to deal with certain production incidents for certain blocks of code because the typelevel computation tells me it would be a compiler bug if it screwed up. I like the feeling of realizing those 100 LOC could just be 10.
I sometimes tell people of when I came down from Mt. Fuji, there were wispy clouds and grand nature below me, picturesque like a painting. At that time, I likened it to the beauty I felt when I was first learning Haskell. But I say it because I expect it to be a rare kind of sentiment.
The thing with art and music is that they are easy to appreciate, and the appreciation grows deeper with more consideration. I love reading the placards in museums and attempting to understand why the artist did what they did, I like it more than even looking at the piece itself.
Code (and math, for that matter) is almost the same except for one key difference: they are not easy to appreciate without deliberate training, training which is often far to the side of anything most people need/want to deal with.
by winwang - Artists value "originality"
From what I have seen over the past thirty years, the vast majority of programmers are generally not interested in "originality". They might even challenge the very notion that software can be "original"; certainly I've seen this perspective in HN comments over the years. These programmers are eager to copy and may even pride themselves on fast they can do it ("implement" a preexisting idea used by someone else)
Even more, culturally, these programmers are generally not fond of other programmers who operate in their own, "original" way. There is a gross amount of peer pressure to conform to "convention" for lack a better term. By and large, they conform; independent thinking is not popular
There are a small number of programmers who elevate programming to an art form. But this is not the majority and these individuals are not representative of programmer behaviour in general
NB. I'm not arguing for or against orginality, utilitarianism, etc. Everything has its proper place. I'm just drawing attention to a frequent difference between programmers and artists