Do you think of programming as an art or as a necessity? Do you think of programming as a passion or just something to make money off of? Do you find that when you write a program you are brought to a place that can no longer be called a job, but a life changing experience?
"A man can be an artist... in anything, food, whatever. It depends on
how good he is at it. Creasey's art is death. He's about to paint his
masterpiece." - Man on Fire
I currently hold a 9-5 job as a software engineer. I consider my self good at the job as does everyone else in my little cubicle. I think the thing that separates the man from the boy or the woman from the girl is the passion one shows has. Do they enjoy the work or do they just come to work for the money? Have you found your dream programming job yet? I personally have not found a job that currently excites me when I code in 1s and 0s. My job has its perks like my ability to do a lot of research into new technologies, but at the end of the day I don't truly enjoy my job. I do it for the money while at work. When I am at home, I do it for the passion. For the fun of seeing things be created from nothing.
At home I spend my time with my family, but my spare time is devoted to hacking (coding). The problem with this is that families and friends can't seem to figure it out. They say "that you do it all day at work, can't you just put down the keyboard and spend some time with us?" I tend to think that some times they might be jealous or ignorant of my computer, but that isn't the case. While I do sit at work all day in front of a computer working on problems, they are problems of need. Hacking at work isn't particularly enjoyable nor does it spark the creative muscle. So, in my spare time I choose programming at home to open that creative muscle. It needs to be freed and fed.
Too often programming is found as a boring task by many of the people I am around. They don't understand its like building a bridge with your mind. You build the bridge up piece by piece and when its finally done, you have a ribbon cutting ceremony and people start traveling on it. They use it and stress test the beautiful code you just wrote. You are completing a part of their lives with your creative imagination. Not by the muscle on your back, but by the thoughts in your head.
This is what excites me about coding. I don't wear gloves that build a bridge, but I write beautiful code that gets used over and over again and solves a real problem in a person's life. It's like a piece of art in a national museum. I don't look at it because its there. I look at it because it is elegant and just plain imaginative. When I code at work its out of necessity for the money. When I go home its to use my creative imagination. At work I am a boy, but at home I am a man.
I hope everyone is able to express their creative imagination sometime of each day even if its not at work.
Programming is an ART for me. I paint my masterpiece each day when I get home.
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