Just because you don't know how to do it, doesn't make it impossible or wrong.

You destroyed your own argument.

By that definition, everything is art. Even my original statement, the quote from breaking bad, is invalid. Life is art. Pumping septic tanks is art. At that point, whats the point of even using the word?

Try more formal university level education. I was being modest and only brought it up because of your continuing slight against my intelligence and qualifications on the subject. Honestly, I have no doubt I am a better programmer than you. You would look upon my work and consider it art.

No the original argument was as follows:

By all of the definitions you provided, programming is a science. The definition I chose was the harder to qualify for.

Take this example: Given a car with fuel efficiency x and distance y, you need to get the car to y. If I say time is your top objective, you'd just ignore fuel consumption and dive all out. If I tell you your goal is to get there the most efficient way possible, then time and fuel come into play. Your bashing of weighted variables just shows your ignorance in both math and science.

Since you clearly have a different definition of art why don't you explain it to me and why your code is worthy of such a title?

Not that you need to know my qualifications. I not only have a formal background in programming but am also an autodidact. I am a professional programmer with a good size company and I continue to take courses and work on personal projects in my spare time.

Whether you believe the article or not, the government has not right to come into my vehicle and tell me to wear a seat belt, just as they have no right to say cave diving or base jumping is too dangerous and therefor are illegal.

Bubble wrapping citizens in the name of safety just makes us less free. That was my point.

Astronomy existed before telescopes, microbiology before microscopes, physics before particle accelerators. These are all just tools that increased measure-ability leading to a more accurate scientific approach. Things like sonar are an initial run at quantifying things like readability and rules compliance and they do a fantastic job.

You can predict with some degree of accuracy what a programs optimal efficiency would be, or did you miss that in your computer science classes? You are right that different languages/environments change the results, and while it adds a large layer of complexity it is still quantifiable. There is and will always be a "best possible solution." I work in an enterprise and not in research, so nothing I do will ever reach that point, but that doesn't prevent it from existing.

Lets take a quick look at the definition of science: systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation. Everything I have said has revolved around this definition, observation and experimentation to gain understanding. Its as if you are intentionally being obtuse.

On the other side art: the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. You don't do whats beautiful or appealing when coding. You do what is right. You don't right a recursive loop when you can do it in a normal loop, just because it looks prettier.

As for memory vs speed vs readability, you can weight requirements making them more or less important and there by altering the target optimal performance. Its simple math.

At this point you are either just a troll or are an incredibly incompetent coder. Do you honestly sit in dev meetings and when asked why you did something respond with "because its art man"?

April Fools! Its only 1%.

The first two are very easy, percent code coverage of unit tests and percent of methods documented. As for additional standards, every language has its best practices.

We are a java shop and use most of the default settings in sonar for best practices. This includes minor things like magic numbers and constant/method naming conventions, all the way to critical errors like dead stores to variables and threading issues. Sonar then takes the number of errors weighted by severity and divides it by number of lines of code. This gives us a nice percentage of code compliance to the defined rules. The goal again is to make that 100%. We also modified a few of the standards in house. For example, we count if statements without brackets against you. That is more of a trivial one, but we as a group agreed it makes the code more readable when working on projects with several developers.

The best possible solution would have 100% code coverage of unit tests, be 100% documented, 100% rules compliance on top of being the fastest, lowest memory consuming solution possible.

Not if your metrics also include readability and maintainability, which mine do. To think there isn't a best possible solution, is delusional. Something like sonar can easily quantify your readability and adherence to coding standards. Thus you can use it as a metric.

That's an oxymoron.

But you had to qualify it with "in your lifetime."

In programming there is a best possible solution to the given problem. You can maximize memory usage and speed and any of a number of other variables to come to best answer. I use a scientific approach to achieve this. I set my metrics, I run my baseline tests, make my improvements and test again. I can then quantify my results.

There is no right answer in art. There is no possible quantification on quality. Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder.

I'd argue the opposite. Programmers who call themselves artists are just glorifying their own work. These tend to be the people who don't understand the logical nature of their work. Not that it matters, but logic was one of my strongest subjects.

Additionally, your tag line isn't a real quote.

There are many feeble, or weak or decrepit, minded people out there that can function day to day, pay their bills, tie their shoes, but I wouldn't trust one to guess the technologies of the next ten years. A feeble mind lacks imagination.

Disregarding something you don't fully understand as improbable, shows more their unwillingness to consider new ideas and possibilities. I'd also consider that feeble minded.

Jesse: You're a goddamn artist.
Walter: Why thank you Jesse but it's just basic chemistry.

One of my favorite quotes from Breaking Bad. It really shows the difference in mentality between someone who thinks they know what they are doing and someone who actually does. No respectable computer programmer calls their work art. Its just science.

FTFA

Seriously, I see a lot of words being put in these researchers mouths.

Additionally, the sample is from 1099 people of varying age (3-20) and socioeconomic status and its relation to brain surface area. While they do a great job correcting the data given, 1099 samples is not hugely statistically relevant given the number of variables. That's why they only admit to a correlation and no speculation on causation.

Context is important. The whole article is about the future state of AI, so saying it isn't a reality today is kind of a moot point. Even you admit it could happen in the future, if not in your lifetime. I'm saying those who completely dismiss the scenario have no imagination.

Still no motive