the frig blig

The frig blig runs on software called WordPress. At the bottom of their website I noticed the following statement: “code is poetry”.

Please. I have to take issue with that.

Code is a series of instructions. Poetry is “a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning” (Wikipedia).

Perhaps some code may seem particularly elegant or even beautiful to coders (see Mel, for a nice example). Perhaps a few script or source code files may have poetic qualities. Poetry is big enough to encompass that.

But generally speaking, code is human-readable computer instructions and poetry is human-to-human communication, usually portraying an experience, not instructions.

It’s fine that coders should be proud of their work, but calling it poetry is going too far. Code is code; poetry is poetry. Learn the difference and appreciate each for what it is.

On the other hand, if poetry is considered moribund,
#define code poetry
would be a huge shot in the arm for the genre.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 8:17 am and is filed under artsy, geeky, general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.