Programming is an Art

I again ran through one of my favourite and all time classic “The Art of Programming” by Donald Knuth. It mesmerises me how beautifully he had written the book. I thought about what kind of great efforts are involved in making such damn good book.

Certainly, programming is an art! We as programmer always do good things. We turn abstract things into reality and serve the society. Look at your mobile phone; look at internet; look at life saving devices that are running inside hospitals, look at any of the airlines reservation system or even railway reservation systems nowadays. We try to help people with our creativity.

One of the facts that we have to agree is not everyone who can programme is great artist. Not everybody can be Michelangelo or Da-Vinci! These great artists pour their heart inside their creations. They took months and years to craft their greatest work.

I would like to follow this great tradition. I might not be a great artist but wish to be and great admirer of Art i.e. programming or rather software development. Great programmers put their heart into their programmes. They treat their programmes with extreme care. They chisel them to finally become excellent masterpieces. Whenever I see a great piece of code or read a book like Donald’s I just fell in love with it. It gives me immense pleasure to look at how beautifully systems are crafted out, how lovely their architecture and design looks.

Some people do just for their livelihood and some live inside their art.

Sadly some people treat us as commodity since there are many cheap imitators available. But they need to just look at one great artist, they can find. You can not feel that intense joy when you watch any photograph of Monalisa or last supper. You need to look at their originals, and then only you can feel the intensity behind its creation, the excellence in brush strokes of masters, the rich use of colours and most precious of all liveliness.

I just want to give a reminder to the people in software business; the great artists are still rare to find! If you had any in your vicinity you should value them at most.