Code is Poetry
January 20th, 2006Over the past few days I have been enjoying a collection of essay by Fredrick P. Brooks, Jr. on Software Engineering and the software development field in general. The book, The Mythical Man-Month, is assigned reading for my Software Engineering class and I have been thoroughly enjoying it. The book presents a rather high-level and philosophical view of my craft and it has been wonderful to see how well I can relate with others of the same passion. From the first chapter, I leave you this quote on the joys of programming:
Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. 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.
