SInce I wrote my first line of code I have been torn between writing and programming. Torn between the code and the fiction. Felt that if I spent more time on one, the other would suffer. Desperately tried to balance them out, and felt exhausted and confused at the end of the day because I wanted to do both but just didn’t have enough hours in the day.
But it is really a meaningless confusion. Staring myself blind at a distinction that doesn’t really exist, or need to exist.
What I initially failed to realize, is that programming is also very creative. And the process behind writing a program and – say – a poem, is actually very similar.
Let’s imagine that we’re not a part of a larger team, and have to program something all by ourselves.
Step one would be actually getting an idea, and being motivated to put it into action. That’s fairly obvious.
Step two would be visualizing it. What components make it up? How could it be structured? How could it be laid out so that others can understand it and use it?
Step three consists of writing.
Step four potentially polishing and re-structuring, correcting errors and testing.
Step five is where you stand proudly beaming with a finished product that you are eager to present to the rest of the world.
And the sixth step – whom nobody will warn you of in advance – is where whoever you approach to brag about your achievement will stare at you in horror and exclaim something like: “You don’t seriously mean that you spent two days on that? Do you?”
It’s exactly like writing poetry.
The sad truth is that programmers and poets are equally misunderstood.
I have come to think – based on the people I have known who have achieved any success whatsoever in either programming or art – that in order to do either, you need particularly strong visualization skills. I won’t call it imagination, because that’s a different concept entirely. I am talking about being able to visualize something in your mind; a complete product or at least the outline for a piece of artwork. And the whole questions of assembling the pieces to create whatever it is that one sees, that’s also something that requires a certain amount of creative energy.
Many people who haven’t tried programming themselves fail to realize how creative a process it is. Funny thing, seeing as programmers are literally doing nothing but creating things. It just goes to show how little the world at large knows about technology, despite being so dependent on it. It’s actually quite sad when you think about it.