I always said "Python is like writing maths, ruby is like writing english"

There's a reason one of the most famous computer scientists and programmers titled his series of books "The Art of Computer Programming".

Worth noting that mathematicians also argue over the art vs. science approach to math itself. Ask one what makes a formula "elegant", for example, can lead to some hand-waving that boils down to "you know it when you see it."

My take: the art is always about the human communication through the medium. As soon as programming is abstracted beyond the 1s and 0s, every choice represents a mental model for communicating intent from a human to a computer and by extension, from a human to a human. Writing "elegant code" is all about communicating intent to other programmers.

You can say the same about math - so much of the human-ness of math is backed into the symbols we use to represent things and relationships. Just think of the human impact of doing multiplication in Arabic numerals vs. Roman numerals and you can understand how math is totally a human construct.

But underneath it, the logic of multiplication is non-human and those that focus on that are the "science-minded" ones. But so much of our human understanding comes from the "art-minded" ones, for obvious reasons.

Programming, objectively speaking, is nothing like balancing equations. When balancing equations, there is only one right answer. When programming, there is a goal and a series of subjective choices need to made in order to reach the goal. There are many right answers. The art and craft is in those subjective decisions. You might not care about the craft in those decisions, but, objectively speaking, I don’t think you can reduce programming to something like balancing equations.

math is like writing a novel, though