Coding is fun, actually

I learned to code later in life and instantly fell in love with it. Nothing I’d done up to this point had given me so much joy. The act of typing some characters into a document and having something change on the screen felt and still feels like magic. There are several layers to programming that I think make it very intellectually and emotionally stimulating. First, there’s figuring out the correct syntax to produce a functional program. Second, there’s the incredibly rewarding feeling of making something from nothing. Third, there’s the polishing phase - playing around with the structure of the code to make it simpler, more testable, more maintainable. Different schools of thought have varying views on this. However, to me, this part is less significant. It’s the tinkering itself that matters most. An interesting lens through which to look at this is the concept of praxis and poiesis.

Praxis is roughly the idea of doing things for their own sake. Think singing in the shower, reading beach novels, etc. You’re not doing it to achieve something. You’re doing it because it’s fun. Now, this takes us into tricky territory. Reading beach novels and doomscrolling can both be seen as praxis, yet feel vastly different. This is a topic for another time.

Poiesis, on the other hand, has a clear goal. You’re creating something and there’s a tangible artifact once you’re finished. It could be an essay, a chair, or an ashtray. I think everyone, regardless of occupation, should have some sort of poietic activity in their life. To me, having the ability to say, “I made this,” about something is one of the fundamental aspects of human existence. Even more so if the final result requires significant time and effort.

Back to coding. I find it entails both praxis and poiesis. It has an observable end result ranging from scripts to apps or even whole operating systems. These are often perceived as ethereal—we use metaphors like clouds and webs to talk about them—yet they have very real effects on the physical world. It’s nice to have built something and see others using it (for good, hopefully). At the same time, the very act of writing code can feel exhilarating. Playing around with a new language or testing out a new design pattern is very rewarding, at least for me. I have written a lot of code that no one will ever read, use, or pay me for, and I’ve enjoyed every second of it.

Recent discourse on the future of programming leans heavily toward poiesis. Some argue that reading code is now a waste of time, let alone writing it. You should let the agents write the code. Your actual job was to have taste™ all along. Ship more code. The more the better. Fix bad code with… more code? Maybe this is all true. Maybe we should all vibe code into the sunset. I don’t know. But whatever happens to this field, I believe it will preserve this magical combination of being able to enjoy the act of creation as much as the creation itself. I, for one, will still be tinkering with code long after I’ve been shipped off to the potato farm by our merciful token masters.