Programming, objectively speaking, is nothing like balancing equations. When balancing equations, there is only one right answer. When programming, there is a goal and a series of subjective choices need to made in order to reach the goal. There are many right answers. The art and craft is in those subjective decisions. You might not care about the craft in those decisions, but, objectively speaking, I don’t think you can reduce programming to something like balancing equations.

Worth noting that mathematicians also argue over the art vs. science approach to math itself. Ask one what makes a formula "elegant", for example, can lead to some hand-waving that boils down to "you know it when you see it."

My take: the art is always about the human communication through the medium. As soon as programming is abstracted beyond the 1s and 0s, every choice represents a mental model for communicating intent from a human to a computer and by extension, from a human to a human. Writing "elegant code" is all about communicating intent to other programmers.

You can say the same about math - so much of the human-ness of math is backed into the symbols we use to represent things and relationships. Just think of the human impact of doing multiplication in Arabic numerals vs. Roman numerals and you can understand how math is totally a human construct.

But underneath it, the logic of multiplication is non-human and those that focus on that are the "science-minded" ones. But so much of our human understanding comes from the "art-minded" ones, for obvious reasons.

Mathematicians love arguing about which proof is the most elegant or most insightful, and which definitions are the ones that most captivate the essence of a concept (ask three mathematicians from different fields to define Euler's constant e, for example).

So yeah, there is very clearly a human and subjective element in mathematics, even when the results themselves are objective (modulo axioms and inference rules).

There's a reason one of the most famous computer scientists and programmers titled his series of books "The Art of Computer Programming".

Knuth doesn't mean "art" as in "fine art to be admired" but rather "art" as in a description of something about which it is not possible to be purely scientific about.

He means both. From his 1974 Turing lecture ("Computer Programming as an Art" http://www.paulgraham.com/knuth.html):

> To summarize: We have seen that computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty.

(See also, from an earlier paragraph “When I speak about computer programming as an art, I am thinking primarily of it as an art form, in an aesthetic sense.” — though the summary is a better reflection of his views.)

I always said "Python is like writing maths, ruby is like writing english"

right! and, to build on that: people who see programming as maths understand it fundamentally differently than those who see it as prose, they approach every aspect of programming differently, evaluate "quality" on entirely different metrics, etc.

in my experience, this is a major source of friction in programming teams, and deserves to be addressed more directly -- if i had it my way, i'd prefer that those who see programming as prose would be disabused of this incorrect notion, but i understand that this is my bias speaking, and not any objective truth :)

As both a writer and someone who has a degree in math, I see the segregation of prose and mathematics into fundamentally different categories as arbitrary, perhaps even incorrect. I see an artistic element to mathematics, just as much as I see a mechanical element to prose. The mechanics of the thing tell us what we can do, the art of it tells us what we want to do. Perhaps even _why we do it.

I find the strict separation of human intellectual activities into "soft" humanities and "hard" sciences kind deeply sad. I'm not claiming that writing is the same thing as performing a physics experiment, but to me, humanity is at its best when it combines both of these elements instead of keeping them apart.

i fully understand and appreciate the distinctions, and equivocations, you're describing here. i also agree with you that the best "stuff" acknowledges and maximizes both left- and right-brained parameters

my point is less about these abstract concepts, and more about the perspectives that human beings have when engaging with this "stuff"

concretely -- when i'm playing a musical instrument, my brain is in a mode that is completely different than, and totally incompatible with, the mode my brain is in when i'm writing a program, or working on a math problem

it's one or the other

why's book reads to me as a "playing an instrument" perspective on a "writing a program" problem, which doesn't work for me, at all -- personally!

other people, it works, i get that

I don’t mean it as a separation, it’s an emotional response to how I do things.

In fact my blog is called The Art && Science of Ruby

With Ruby I feel (feel being the operative word) like I’m free to get the computer to do what I want and create something that looks good and makes me happy.

But in other languages I immediately feel cramped and constrained - and the code looks ugly to my eyes.

As for correctness and quality, number one is it has to fulfil the business requirements I’m being paid for (and I’ve shipped lots of crappy code that I’m ashamed of but the clients are very happy) and secondary, I like to look back at it and see something elegant that also looks good in an editor.

Of course, the definitions of elegant and “looks good” are the real questions here.

yep! and i have almost exactly the opposite experience!

with ruby i feel (same caveats) like there is so much ambiguity that i can't build a coherent and predictable mental model of my program -- it makes me feel anxious and unsure

what you characterize as "cramped and constrained" i probably experience as "precise and unambiguous" -- it makes me feel calm and in control

no judgment from me about which of these perspectives is better or worse, i don't think there is any way to say that, just want to point out this interesting difference in perspective among practitioners

math is like writing a novel, though