Programming is art

When I started programming, my whole day revolved around development. I’d wake up, write code, and go to sleep. And that’s how it was day in and day out. My entire social circle consisted of people who also wrote code. I studied frameworks, libraries, and various programming languages.

I got into development because I was fascinated by the idea that by writing code, I could create new programs. All I needed to do was learn how to program, and I’d be able to create anything. If I learned PHP, I could build back-end applications. If I learned HTML and CSS, I could build websites.

I could choose what I wanted to create, learn the necessary technologies for it, and start building. You open an IDE, create a new project, and build it from scratch. You choose patterns, libraries, and frameworks; you read the documentation and dive into the source code. You get so immersed in the process that you don’t even notice how the days fly by. Over time, you develop your own coding style.

I wrote code, and I enjoyed writing code, but it wasn’t the kind of work I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I preferred creating something new to the actual process of writing code. I liked starting from scratch — with nothing but an idea — to create a product that people actually use. That’s why I’ve always worked exclusively at startups and never at large companies.

I’ve always dreamed of advancing my career — to become a team lead, a manager, or to take on another role that didn’t involve writing code. And whenever someone else could write the code, I’d shift away from coding toward managerial tasks. Whether I wrote the code myself or delegated it to others didn’t matter to me.

Although I got into development out of an interest in creating things, later on I did it solely because I was getting paid for it. For me, it was just a job. Even though I wrote code in my free time, I still used that approach to build my own startups, which I planned to make money from. Writing code and making money were inseparable. Over time, income from projects became the main focus, rather than simply the desire to create projects.

But there’s another type of person. These are true programmers who write code regardless of income. They write code simply because they can’t help but write it. It doesn’t matter to them how much money they make from it. They might work on open-source projects that will never generate any income for them.

They enjoy writing code, solving development challenges, designing, figuring out the logic, fixing bugs, and understanding the entire system as a whole. They enjoy the process itself. And they’ll never hand that over to AI agents.

I love building startups, and they love writing code. For me, building projects is a way to make money. For them, programming is art.

That’s why all my arguments about how AI helps me build projects are completely irrelevant to true artists. They don’t need AI to help them with anything.

And that’s why there’s often a negative reaction to the claim that AI will soon replace all programmers. For artists, this claim itself is illogical. Even if some technological breakthrough occurs and AI can truly work autonomously and solve problems hundreds of times faster than humans, people will still continue to write code by hand, line by line. AI will never be able to take away their ability and desire to write code.

I don’t use AI when writing. It produces soulless, bland text. AI slop that no one wants to read. I want to come up with the wording myself, proofread and edit the text, come up with a title, and delete unnecessary sentences and entire paragraphs. I like it when new ideas for the text come to me as I’m writing. The writing process itself — the thinking that goes on in the moment — is important to me, not just the result. If I asked an AI to write a text on the topic “Programming is art”, that thought process wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t experience the same emotions that come with writing it myself. For me, writing is art that I pursue regardless of money. I think people who enjoy writing code feel the same way.