Is Software Creative?
by Shiaw-Ling Lai
Drop the words, “software engineer,” into a dinner table conversation and it’s unlikely you’ll get anyone gushing over the amazing creativity of your work or the awesome artistry involved in designing computer applications. One stereotype that might come to mind instead is the white-collared, khaki-wearing man with poor social skills and painfully thick black glasses. Although the preconceptions about such occupations are rapidly changing in the face of a new, more tech-savvy and wired generation, such characterizations still persist. The bottom line: “creativity” is not the first word out of anyone’s mouth when we’re we’re talking about creating software.
In fact, a Google search for the question, “Is software a creative process?” gets an almost inconceivable answer for our data-saturated web world: “no results.” Related fields yield links to software for creative people, or Creative Process as a name for software, but no one tackling the question: is the creation of software a creative endeavor?
Granted, there is a lot of grunt work involved in the research, development, programming, and testing of software that doesn’t seem immediately “creative” in the conventional sense of the word. But there is also design, problem-solving, and troubleshooting that can be a very generative, creative process. Computers may run on electrical impulses based on a pure “yes” or “no” binary configuration, but quickly diagnosing and coming up with solutions can be both intuitive, and demanding of some very out-of-the-box thinking.
Think of the scene in Apollo 13 when Ed Smylie brings in a box of plastic bags, cardboard and duct tape, and literally asks his engineers to literally put a square peg in a round hole. Engineers taking problems and making the solution creative.
But what about software engineering? Is it creative? What do you think?
[reposted from lambodar.com]