wildchocolate

Without art, writing code would simply be a process of regurgitating syntax and stringing together if-then statements to create logical algorithms. When I was in engineering school, it seemed pretty obvious to me that you could apply design to any engineering field. For instance, civil engineering includes the design and construction of buildings and bridges, which involves a lot of vision and artistic insight. However, when I looked at computer science the first time I could only see straight forward logic problems and endless lines of code. That is, until I was shown the light.

I quickly realized that not only was I wrong about this, but computer science is often as much an art as it is a science. I instantly became excited by this possibility, and even wrote a paper on this topic after finding numerous essays discussing the art of computer science. But what I have started to realize as a software developer is that not only is art a huge piece of the puzzle, it is also critical to innovating. It’s simply not possible for a good coder to ignore the many different angles and tools that may be applied to solve a problem. And most of the day, I code something for which I must be simultaneously considering the design of the user interface. Even when there is no interface involved, I want my code to look beautiful, organized, and I want it to flow. These are mostly superficial properties of the code, as a code file which is a mess and not the least bit organized may still function the same as far as the user is concerned. However at other times, writing code in a creative way is absolutely necessary because all the known straight forward methods are not working for the problem you are trying to solve. Or maybe you just don’t see the current solution as elegant, and you want to craft a better approach to a problem that provides an elegant and intuitive solution.

As I continue to grow my skills as a software developer, the art weighs more and more heavily in my coding process. Since I have always been a fan of the arts and enjoy any creative process, this is simply a requirement for me to embrace the creativity of coding. If you’re skeptical, I invite you to google for art in computer science and see what you find. Perhaps if more people understood the art and creativity involved in computer science, they would flow more readily into the field.