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Comment by zb | Hacker News Reader

Actually, if you want my personal definition of art in one word it is this: art is life. Whether it is done "well" doesn't really come into it. In fact if there is an objective way of determining if something is done "well", it's probably not art.

I'm prepared to agree to disagree on this, but I'm not prepared to agree that Wikipedia has the last word on the subject. Sorry.

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Why even have a word for it? I understand the emotional idea that programming can be an art, but it doesn't change the generally understood definition of art.

I could just as well be melodramatic like that kid in American Beauty and go on about how a plastic bag being blown about by the wind is the most beautiful thing ever. I could suggest the same about the way some skillful janitor moves his mop about the floor. Just because I get emotional about it doesn't change the definition of art.

Spoken like Humpty Dumpty.

Fair enough. But you haven't given us your definition of engineering yet. According to your wiki page:

Traditionally, the term art was used to refer to any skill or mastery. This conception changed during the Romantic period, when art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science".

You evidently subscribe to this Romantic definition of art, but claim that engineering is neither art nor science. So that makes it... religion?

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