Ruby is Beautiful? What is Beauty?

If you’re a Rubyist you know the meme that “Ruby allows you to write beautiful code”.

Several within the community have tried to define what “Beautiful Ruby Code” is. Most of them managed to show us really beautiful code, but I still haven’t seen anyone actually communicate the concept of “Beauty”.

Enter TED. If you know me, you know I’ve been completely addicted to it for years now, every theme inspires me. And tonight, while having dinner, I watched the great Richard Seymour (no, he is not a programmer) talking about this very subject and I was blown away.

Find the video below, but let me add a few words of my own. In our small world of programmers and technologists, we have lots of discussions around “Form” vs “Function”, as if we should choose one over the other, or balance one against the other.

I’m of the same opinion as Richard: it is not a matter of “Form” VS “Function”. The correct way of thinking is “Form” IS “Function”. And beauty is something you feel, before any analysis or rationalization.

Your reaction to beauty is directly tied to what you know and what you’ve experienced. Without living and without learning, you won’t find beauty. Back to programming, it’s impossible for someone that just started to write software, or even someone that already did a few small projects, to grasp the concept of “beauty”.

It’s only after some time, some experience, and some learning that they’ll start to grasp what beauty possibly feels like.

With that comment, please watch Richard Seymour (if you want subtitles for your native language, go to the original site so you can choose subtitles):

Knowledge and Experience are everything. Ignorance doesn’t know beauty.