Today I’ll be giving a brand new talk at Groupon’s Geekfest!  If you’re here because you came to the talk and want to see slides: hey there!, I hope you liked it, and you’ve come to the right place.  I’m posting up the talk description and slides for reference, and as soon as the video’s up I’ll be sure to post it as well.

Shall I Compare Thee to a Line of Code?

Programming has a lot more in common with the arts than we like to think—and no, I don’t just mean it’s good for making apps like Draw Something.  People often speak of programming as an art form, saying that great code can somehow transcend basic functionality and become something that has value in the essence of its form.  But, as we all know, writing code is easy—it’s writing the good stuff that’s hard.

So what can we take from study of the arts that would illuminate our own paths as developers?  In this talk, I’ll go through some poetic principles that clarify ideas about software development, both in the way we write our code and the way we grow as creators and teammates.  We’ll explore the way poets learn to shape their craft and see what we can steal to help our code level up from functioning to poetic.

See the slides on Slideshare!