Beautiful code

Beauty is the summation of the parts working together in such a way that nothing needs to be added, taken away or altered. —Carlotti

Given that, isn’t it fair to say that code can be beautiful? I try to write “beautiful code” every time I open TextMate, but I’ve never pinpointed exactly what “beauty” meant in relation to coding. I personally think of it in terms of abstractions, modularity, and code reuse, all while using the best-practice idioms in the process. Of course, it’s open for interpretation.

If you’re interested, here’s a book on the subject and a keynote by Marcel Molina, Jr. (one of my favorite programmers/thinkers).

I haven’t read the book, but the ideas in the video are intriguing.