Code as a form of expression.
I was recently having a conversation with a colleague of mine in regards to whether or not writing code can be considered a form of expression. As a musician I find many ways to express my artistic side with writing songs and through the guitar in general. It so happens to be that my other favorite hobby, and profession, is software development.
While I am at work or working on a personal project I tend to approach any JavaScript that I am writing as an art form. I feel that this sort of perspective enables me to write better code and also express myself in a similar manner as any other sort of author. In addition, when looking at my code as a form of literature I am able to read it the same as if I was reading a story. I would also hope that others can enjoy reading the code as well and see that there is an effort to make the code beautiful.
Unfortunately, the colleague and I do not see eye-to-eye when it comes to writing code as a form of expression. His perspective is that it is a tool and he approaches things in that manner. The example given was, “If I am hired to chop down a forest, I bring an axe.” This of course meaning, that he does not look at writing code as an art and rather the code as a tool that is utilized to accomplish a task.
While I do respect this opinion I also feel as if it a bit of an sad way to approach your work. I can only hope that every bit of code that I write is enjoyable and does not become something I just have to do to get a paycheck. I feel fortunate that my line of work is also my passion and that I am not stuck in a dead end job, watching the clock every couple of minutes.
Albeit, he has been professionally developing software for much longer than me and explained that his perspective has come from years and years of writing code. Either way, I will continue to write code as if it is an art form and hope that that will continue to make my profession enjoyable for years to come.
