Category: art

The Art

February 3, 2009 by Janusz Marcin Gorycki

Photo (c) Janusz Gorycki

Donald Knuth's famous book is titled "The Art of Computer Programming". Take it from one of the "gods" of our profession - software development is "The Art"! More precisely though, it is an act of creation. Nothing surprising about it if you take a closer look: suffice it to say that no two computer programs should be the same. If you find yourself coding the some thing twice, you are doing something very wrong. Also, computer programs do not really have any material form to speak of, other than a bunch of electrons stuck in a chip of silicon - they are quite literally - pure manifestation of someone's ideas.

Let me put this in an eye-catching one-liner to focus everyones attention: software is not manufactured in a scientifically controlled way - it is created

This simple (and pretty obvious) observation does not imply that programming is a more "noble" activity then, say, sweeping floors, bookkeeping or assembling cars in the factory - the value of ones work should be judged solely by the results and not by the nature of the task. It does however have quite a few interesting and very often neglected consequences - and any software project manager (agile or otherwise) would be better off rememebering them.