Software as an art. The aesthetic influence in software development

This thesis uses literature and quantitative interviews to look closer at how aesthetics and software development is connected. The thesis springs of from Warren Sacks claim, in “The Software Arts”, that at the centre of computing is the liberal arts. In this book Sack only focused on language and programming something that this thesis found lacking. Since aesthetics is a large part of humanities and the liberal arts, it can therefore be argued that aesthetics is also a part of the centre of computing. Because of this this thesis is investigating not just at programming but software management and software design as well, to see where aesthetics can be seen and how it has affected software development. The thesis therefore gives definition and explanation to what aesthetics is in the three topics just mentioned, programming, software management and software design. Before using these definitions to create a fourth definition around the aesthetics of software development. The thesis is trying to show the aesthetic beauty of software development and argues that there are more to software development then coding and mathematics. It also takes a closer look at outside forces that has helped change what developers have found aesthetic through the last few decades. The method this thesis used allowed the arguments to build on scientific articles and check these up towards what developers in businesses thought about aesthetics. The findings were that the developers in the businesses showed a great interest in some aesthetic attributes, specifically working to create a good product for the user gave them positive feelings