To me, programming is a very personal art. I want to say like a painting that is never quite finished, or a sculpture that keeps getting changed and added to, but these are not right. I have yet to come up with a good simile.

The measure of quality that I use against my programs is along these lines:
1.) How easy is it to modify the program to do tasks that were unimagined when it was written?
2.) How easy is it to understand after forgetting all about everything it does?

I was once asked by a real live artist (painter) who had no clue about computers, why they would dare call programming art. I tried to explain that there is a sort of magic in a well written program, that isn't there in most ordinary programs. The magic is like what there is in a great movie, or a book you stay up all night to finish, or what the sunlight does to the way you see things in the early morning and the late evening. When she didn't understand this, I tried using my Christmas story.

Every couple of years when I was small, at Christmas time, one present, above all others turned out to be something very special to me for one reason or another -- it had magic. Usually, this was the thing that I gave a lot of attention to - kept it clean, handled it with care, walked around with it all day long, and in the ultimate tribute to the item - took it to bed with me on Christmas night.

When I write a really good (perl, C, whatever) program, I don't know it right away. It's usually months or years later, when it needs to be changed to do something unimagined when it was first written. I dump myself back into the program to try and understand it's DNA - how it was built, what was I (or the original programmer) thinking when they designed/wrote it, what is the framework. If I can understand all that, in a short amount of time, and it all hangs together well, then it's pretty darned good. However, if I can change it with a few quick swipes, to do this new, unimagined thing - well, I usually get a little tickle in my belly, and this goofy grin on my face. Then I know that it's a winner!!

I usually want to take it to bed with me that night.

She seemed to understand this.

...my 2 cents.

-Craig

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