Codigo

The Poetics Of Coding
• By Matt Ward
• May 5th, 2010
There is little doubt that WordPress is one of the most popular blogging and content management platforms out there today. This is not an article about WordPress, though, but rather a more general musing on one of its thought-provoking taglines: “Code Is Poetry.”
That’s an interesting metaphor. Recently, I’ve written about the differentlanguages used by designers and developers, and also about the relationship between these coding languages and proper human language (specifically, English). As someone who graduated from university with a degree in English Literature and came to Web design in a roundabout way, this kind of thinking has always interested me.
As has this apparent connection between code and poetry. What does themetaphor mean? I took some time to really think about this relationship and discovered that the people at WordPress got it right (again). Code really is similar to poetry!
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A Superficial Similarity
To start off, code andpoetry have a somewhat obvious and entirely superficial similarity, and we may as well begin there. Here is a poem I wrote a few years ago:
A man in a suit,
standing on an old stone bridge,
sees the reflection
of himself in the water
flowing, unhindered, below.
I promise this will be the only work of mine that I include here, but let’s compare it to some snippets of simple code, startingwith HTML:
1
2
3 The Title
4 Some content
5
6
Now look at some CSS:
1 div {
2 border: 1em 0px;
3 background-color: #444
4 border: 1px solid #222;
5 }
And finally some JavaScript:
1 function cubeMe(x){
2 var answer = x*x*x;
3 alert(answer);
4 }
I want to highlight two key elements: the short lengths and the prominent indentation. These are both commonelements of poetry and code (though not absolutely necessary to either).
This comparison is superficial at best, and there is a much stronger connection to explore. Still, this basic similarity reveals a certain visual relationship between code and poetry, which gives us an interesting entry point to discuses the subject.
A Master’s Art
This code-is-poetry metaphor comes at least partly from aperception of poetry as the master’s craft. Whether you love or hate it (and I know a lot of people hate it), there has always been a general sense that poetry sits at the apex of the written word, as though poets sit in an ivory tower, composing lines with a golden pen.

Of course, the reality is strikingly different. A lot of really bad poetry is out there, written by people who call themselvespoets just because they can rhyme words at the end of two lines.
Does that sound familiar?
How similar is this to the proverbial “nephew”? You know the one: that kid who read the introduction to a high-school textbook about the Web, figured out a few HTML tags and is now driving you crazy with his offer of a “Web design” for $100 and a six-pack of beer. Makes you want to tear your hair out,doesn’t he?
Anyone who has been at this Web design thing for a while (or at least anyone who takes themselves seriously) would agree that there’s more to the job than hacking out content wrapped in a bunch of poorly structured and entirely non-semantic HTML. For those of us who strive to be masters of our craft, code is so much more.
Code has purpose and meaning. It requires structure. It should belightweight and elegant, not bogged down with lines and lines of garbage. Writing great code isn’t something that just happens. It takes discipline and work! It’s an art unto itself.
Feeling impassioned yet? If so, you might have the heart of a poet. I’ll tell you why.
Of Pen And Purpose
Every good poem has a purpose. The purpose need not be so lofty as to change the world or to establish a new...