Programming computers is similar to other styles of traditional writing having primary intent to communicate to humans, but the added difference is that in programming, there is also an intent to control as well as to communicate, to provide an user friendly interface that intelligently extends, augments, and empowers the user to participate in the control over the machine and its computer computational, communicational functioning to produce a desired outcome (and hopefully a correct one) with minimum inaccuracy, confusion, or complexities. Programs should be fault tolerant and even assume the user might be faulty in their use of the interface.
A computer program is so much more than mere rote coding. It has intelligent design and effective implementation. Creating and developing a program is creating new living and ever improving entities with forms, features, and functions, thinking out loud and assimilating corrective feedback while projecting a future that pragmatically pleases and fulfills the program's environmental purpose in life.
A work of art program is like a person, it's compatible, modifiable, and performs productively, positively, the entire duration of its presence in its host system. It consumes a minimum of resources while processing its inputs producing outputs for others.
(Yo, I'm kind of with you on this one. I never found programming to be something to be done "without thinking about it". Code in itself, well written, well designed and elegantly done, can be an art. Sure there are things which tend to be the same like the typical "file management system" for a flat file - those things I wrote a generator for but I found most programming to be very thought intensive. Of course, I was a systems designer on a PC environment type thing but that being said, I enjoyed IBM assembler and COBOL equally well.... (Sue Widemark http://healthread.net)
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