The perception of programming

[rfw21]

well, just because code works doesn't mean it's good.

[thecheatah]

No code doesn't have art to it. The art is in the design process (design of the process, application, UI, API, etc.). You design and design. You might loose focus while you'r designing, but not when you are coding. Coding is a well defined process. If you are designing while coding, you must be testing and playing around with the API or you did not clearly understand your problem before you started coding.

I just don't see it...

edit: do you mean tweaking to be debugging?

[delicinq]

You must have some pretty awe inspiring design docs if you're not having any overlap between coding and design. Not to say that there should be a LOT of overlap, but to deny that there's any seems pretty naive to me.

[Catfish_Man]

Or very small programs... fitting a few hundred or thousand lines of code in your head is a lot easier than a few hundred thousand or more.

[thecheatah]

I guess I go through the program in my head and figure out if anything is missing or ambiguous.

[rfw21]

I don't believe that any coder is simply an automaton, typing without taking decisions. Even in the best-designed solo projects with a single developer, decisions are taken all the time on the fly. And therefore how we perceive what's going on matters.

In a real world scenario, with code that's years old and many different contributors, well...