Topi Kettunen

The Poetry of Programming

I found this great quote from Richard P. Gabriel , Lisp hacker and a poet, which summarizes nicely my feelings towards programming and how I see it as a creative field more so than technical:

“Writing code certainly feels very similar to writing poetry. When I’m writing poetry, it feels like the center of my thinking is in a particular place, and when I’m writing code the center of my thinking feels in the same kind of place. It’s the same kind of concentration. So, I’m thinking up possibilities, I’m thinking about, well, so how do I reinvent the code, gee, you know, what’s the simplest way to do this.”

– Richard P. Gabriel