Well, what is art any­how? I think to a cer­tain degree art, like beauty, is defined in some mea­sure by the beholder. As I have come to define the term ‘art’ for myself; art is a craft that is per­formed with some mea­sure of inspi­ra­tion. Any­one with the right train­ing can paint a car, but an artist can paint a car beau­ti­fully. To that, much of the same can be said for pro­gram­ming. Any­one with the right train­ing can pro­gram and make an appli­ca­tion but an artist can make a truly mag­nif­i­cent and effi­cient appli­ca­tion that can be very useful.

Art is a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between humans on a sub­con­scious level; art ‘hap­pens’ when we make a con­nec­tion that we are con­sciously unaware of but still feel has some mean­ing or sense of pur­pose. Yes I say, pro­gram­ming is an art. Pro­gram­mers are not too far removed from the tra­di­tional mean­ing of an author; both are smiths of lan­guage and syn­tax — albeit the tar­get audi­ences are mar­gin­ally dif­fer­ent. One audi­ence hopes to be informed or taken on an imag­i­nary jour­ney while the other audi­ence is a machine that only under­stands the dif­fer­ence between a one and a zero.

Pro­gram­ming, like any other form of art requires a con­cep­tual under­stand­ing and a desire to prac­tice. Does the author long for days of sit­ting behind a desk in an office? Does the painter wish to deliver the mail? My point is this; in order to pro­duce truly excep­tion art you must pro­duce truly inspired art, which starts with a true desire to learn. If the painter really doesn’t want to paint, it will even­tu­ally show in his paint­ings, once the nov­elty of being a painter has passed.

As in any form of art, the truly inspired prac­ti­tion­ers seem to share some like­nesses in char­ac­ter and per­son­al­ity. The art of pro­gram­ming tra­di­tion­ally seems to attract those who dis­play an out­wardly ana­lyt­i­cal ratio­nal, are math­e­mati­cians, are good with dif­fer­ent types of puz­zles or may have a back­ground in the sci­ence com­mu­nity. By no means is that a con­cise list of per­son­al­ity mark­ers but does embody some of the more com­mon ones.

Pro­gram­ming is cer­tainly not going to be for every­one, like many things it takes a par­tic­u­lar genetic makeup to have the desire to be a pro­gram­mer and not just ‘be’ a pro­gram­mer. I don’t have to be a painter to enjoy going to an art museum, just like you don’t have to be a pro­gram­mer to appre­ci­ate your favorite com­puter game.

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Writ­ten By:

Ryan Huff
ryan@rthconsultants.com
http://rthconsultants.com

Ryan Huff is a free­lance web devel­oper, tech­nol­ogy men­tor, mar­tial artist, busi­ness devel­oper and an avid inter­net mar­keter. You can con­nect with Ryan at RTH Con­sul­tants, fol­low Ryan at Twit­ter or at Face­book