Why do I like to code?

I was recently asked this in an interview but I could not think of a reason for why I like to code.

Then I remembered how I feel while coding.

When I’m coding a system, I feel like I’m making art. Think of a young artist who hasn’t been taught how to make the proper strokes or lines. More accurately someone who isn’t pedantic. They just make art because it is elegant and beautiful. In my mind, coding is kind of similar. If someone has been taught the entire guidebook on the standards for coding and they follow it, there still are so many things which can be made elegant. Structures, arrangements and ensuring scalability are all artistic traits in programming. For example, when I understood the principle and working behind Map Reduce, I was stunned and I aspire to emulate that. To be honest I haven’t really had to adhere to standards for my coding up till now, but when for some problem I see an elegant piece of code or idea, I stop and appreciate the thought and the skill behind it.

We just call the language of communicating with computers as programming. I have worked with machine code which is closest to the language the machine understands, then Python which is one of the most human readable programming language. (Mainstream or widely used because some programming languages like RockStar are entirely made up of english words and characters from a book.) My first high level programming language was C++ and in my experience once you understand all the principles behind one, you can apply them to learning a new language and using Stackoverflow and widely available online tutorials, accomplish anything.

Programming has made possible so many conveniences which were unheard of before even 30 years. If you said to someone 300 years ago that you read this sitting at home seconds after I posted it, you might have been burned at stake for being a witch or a wizard. The internet, tens of trillions of value, hundreds of pioneers working at thousands of companies and universities and the millions of new ideas per year, billions of calculations per millisecond are all possible due to computers and our ability to coax them to do amazing things. I really love being part of this new revolution and I am almost ready to contribute to this equation to make the world a better place.

Finally, the most fundamental reason is that it makes sense to me in a world where everything else is not so simple, this is. I may get stuck on a problem, but the feeling I get when I go past it is amazing. And also I can do it well and that makes me happy.

Thank you for reading!