Programs are Poems

Programs and poems are two very much similar things. I would say that in a programming language, a well written program is as noble as a poem.

Compiling a poem requires knowledge of grammar underlying a language. This is so even when it comes to programming except that the word grammar is referred to as the syntax of a programming language.

A program is often inspired by details which a common individual seeks. While a poem is the expression of what an individual sees.

Programming is recognized by the format in which it is written. It is a norm for most programming languages to have clear demarcations to indicate purpose such as the use of ‘:’ and “;’ in c, c++,m Java, ...

Today we have innumerable editors what color specific words such as the key words in a specific color so as to give the programmer a better feel of the programming experience.

The loss of a punctuation mark can give a completely un-in-intended meaning in a program as well as a poem.

Yes the advent of internet has had its own impact in both these fields. It has enabled people who are new to a language to do come up with amazing creations. While websites like ‘stackoverflow’ provide snippets required to execute the intention of a programmer, it is known that a good duration of experience can move a real difference between a a well written program, good performing, sensitive program and total chaos.

Wrong choice of words while writing a poem/program can make all the difference in perception. As length of poem/program increases, a user takes longer to comprehend the implications. Since people cant really rely on programming languages to talk to one another, often the programs contain comments. Comments are essential to clarify the intentions with which the coding was done and thus serve to help optimize itself. Certain parts of the program can be progressively replaced by computationally efficient and syntactically convenient alibi. Like programmers have a choice of logic, poets too have a choice of conveyance.

Just as a person can be trained to program, so can be done in terms of poems. How ever not everyone turns up a work of art.

It takes attitude, innovation and passion to excel at programming. The right choice of code for a particular purpose can drastically reduce the effort in completing a project. And also reduce the effort later spent in debugging it (^_~). Good programs get appreciations and awards once in a blue moon, because Programming has been looked at in a totally different perspective as of today.

We see that great works like Shakespear’s getting a lot of recognition, however the same attitude is not seen towards programming giants. A well written program has the effect of mesmerizing an onlooker like the “list comprehension” in python.

Yes most of us aspire to write great programs but because of lack of right guidance at the right time, we see cases, where an attempt to write a brilliant poetry ends up in as a messy paragraph not standing out as a status of a poem.

In most languages, a good rhyming sentence is considered an appreciable poem. In programming, a well indented code is similarly said to be appreciable written program. The change in scenario is quite noticeable because, poems are meant to be read out loud, while that’s not the case of a programming language. A fresh mind and adequate concentration is required to write a poem/program.

One might argue that poems generally tend to carry a deep sense of emotions, this is not something we seen in a program and this difference comes from the fact that programming languages cannot be used between people to abuse each other or show love one has for another in strict linguistic sense. At best one can write a program for emotion recognition and write appropriate functions to handle the circumstance.

Programs are written for a machine to understand what humans tend to convey. Even thought the program tends to convey the requirements, there are glitches and performance penalties when time of execution is not considered in many cases. Such too is the case when it comes to poetry. A person reciting a poem is generally expected to recite it in a more or less agreeable tone to have the full impact of the poem under recital.

Programs have evolved only recently in the history of our species. Yet we have developed different styles and types of languages, in which we express and convey the desired results, from the rate at which computer programs are evolving, it can be said that the programs are here to stay and inspire generations of programmers yet to come.