Art of Programming

"I consider a good program to be "art." Granted, it's not "art" about which people in stylish clothes can debate whether it demonstrates the essential conflict between man and his inner raccoon. Unfortunately, the art of programming is only recognizable to people who have been trained to recognize it. It's like paintings made with ink that is only visible when wearing special glasses, except the glasses take years to build, and everyone must build their own glasses.
When I see a program that is well designed, that is loosely-coupled, and nicely laid out as a set of objects, I recognize it as beautiful.
In fact, I would suggest that the world is FULL of artists. It's just that not every artist uses a medium that is recognizable to anyone but those who work in that medium.
It's the efforts of those artists which drive human progress forward, in that the love of their craft drives the efficiency and productivity gains that have created our current level of technical sophistication. Which art matters more to humanity, the art which enables people with certain highly-symmetrical faces to earn vast quantities of money in return for having their picture taken (okay, I oversimplify), or the people who actually make the advances which improve the lot of humanity?"
-John Carroll