alt Hacker News> Code is a beautiful form of creative expression, as rich as literature or music
I think this is overstating it and makes me wonder how familiar the author is with literature and music. Most programming is closer to plumbing. We come in, gripe about the guy who did the prior job, and solve a puzzle with some unique constraints. The reason LLMs are good at coding is because with coding we want boring, banal code.
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The coding we want for industry sure. Difference between IKEA and my uncle, an incredible, sought after carpenter.
Yes, if you're just going down a list of jira tickets and implementing product features, but for many folks it's also an art medium.
I kinda like the music comparison because it's so rich with sociological analogues. You have the gear snobs who can't stop buying more premium gear but never sit down and write anything. The kids who pick up a copy of Garageband and put together hits with their natural talent, sense of taste and and interesting story to tell. Soundtrack and videogame composers who have hybrid instincts of session musicians and architects. Avant garde musicians who you're never fully sure of whether they're playing a joke you're in on (or on you) and that's kinda the point. Music critics who have never played or written music a day in their life and yet end up becoming arbiters (or more accurately, delegates) of taste. Fandom stans and ringleaders who absorb it as an identity and run extraordinarily well organized cults with an iron fist.
You can probably find correlates here with coding and AI any which way you look. Coding is so rich that you can use it to do artistic, creative pursuits because it really is an interactive and world building medium if you want it to be. And it can also be a practical, reliable machine that helps you get useful business objectives done. And anywhere in between!
Perhaps the author is indexing on the former because there's an intrinsic value to that, and intrinsic values seem to be quite drowned out by the noise of extrinsic values in this media supercycle.
But I don't think it'll be that way forever. Whenever things get too noisy, people have a way of seeking peace and quiet.
I make this comparison a lot and a lot of devs don't like it.
I am sure I could make a decent industrial PLC tech, same shit, different tools.
Most programming is that, but most music and literature are probably uninspired junks as well. But there are many beautiful algorithms (such as the ones in Knuths books) that are more beautiful than any music for me personally.