I felt it more a transgression to tell people I was a programmer (and I still feel uncomfortable with the label “engineer” despite having the title long enough to be uncomfortable saying how long). Then again art is what led me to code, I learned how to program first and foremost because the “telling people” was either too limited (no established platforms to publish music) or too tedious (tons of redundant work adding metadata to self hosted published material, then adding it to HTML as well, then updating everything to reflect any new navigation).

More than all of that though, I’ve long felt that programming computers is art. You don’t have to identify with that, but it’s a fundamentally creative pursuit. It’s full of choices and expression and compromise and imperfection. At least from my perspective, anyone who has made something that makes machines do things is qualified to claim the title “artist” if they would like to.