“The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. (As we shall see later, this very tractability has its own problems.)”
This is a quote from Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. in The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering which highlights a larger discussion of software and it’s similarity to art.
It’s funny, I think most people ‘on the outside looking in’ might not see programming as an artistic endeavor, and will think it odd to suggest a strong connection between art and software, while those who write software for a living wouldn’t find this article at all surprising. Personally, I think software development is the perfect balance for the left and right sides of your brain. This article articulates it very nicely!