The Art of Programming

“I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” – Richard Feynman

If you hold up a flower and take a look at the flower, you will say “what a beautiful flower”. A painter might take that flower and put it into a painting, a biologist can take the flower and take a look at the cells of the flower. A programmer can take that very same flower and create a program to model the structure of the flower, examine it and understand its process of the flower. You see, programming can help you explore the real world around you, or it can help you create new worlds that you might imagine. There is no limit unless you strictly put it there.

Programming is more than just the lines of code that you write; programming gives you the ability to take an idea you have and quickly bring it to reality. That could be a mobile application or an elegant algorithm. Whatever the case may be, you will have to be creative and use your artistic taste to find a beautiful solution.

The true art of computer programming is being able to understand the problem at hand and coming up with a solution. Just like problems in the real world, computer problems have more than one solution. It’s your job as a programmer to be able to navigate this world of solutions and find the most elegant solution that you can find.

Programming requires the use of Art, Science, and Engineering. Later in this series we will be taking a closer look at the “sugar syntax” and we will explore different parts of programming where you will have to be creative.

What type of creativity? Take for example some of the choices programmers have to consider when designing a program.

• The structure and layout
• Design decisions on the type of code convention to use
• Deciding on an algorithm to use