Peter Lewerin
1 min readAug 25, 2019

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From the links you posted:

“Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author’s imaginative, conceptual ideas, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.”

“Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other things, including bridges, roads, vehicles, and buildings.”

Leave out the italicized clause of the first quote, and it becomes very clear that programming/development is both art and engineering. (And even that part is sort of applicable.)

“There should be only one way to do a thing.”

Do you really think that engineering, or especially software engineering, works like that? There are almost always alternative, fully valid ways.

Individualism and working within a community aren’t that hard to reconcile, and in programming, an individual taste is an important part of what makes the programmer an asset.

AFAICT, this text boils down to something like “programming within a community is easier if everyone follows the same style guide” and “it’s better to do something professionally than working like an amateur”. Sure, but the false art/engineering dichotomy just muddles things up.

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Peter Lewerin
Peter Lewerin

Written by Peter Lewerin

Algorithmician, history buff, non-practicing hedonist. Whovian, ghiblist: let there be wonder. Argumentative, punster, has delusions of eloquence.

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