Programming: What do you like about it?

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Programming is my special interest.

I love it.

I like to program because it is packed full of logic with an infinite field of possibility plus the fact I can get really immersed in it.

Its just the fact that almost anything is possible.

Programming is one of the few realms of effort where I can "get into the Zone" and lose all track of time. The others are creative writing, drawing, and making music.

I like esoteric uses of first class functions and/or templates. Such as the y-combinator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_combinator

It is logical and you can determine in short order if your program meets specifications. It is a no bullsh*t endeavor.

ruveyn

I tend to do quite a bit of my programming with pen and paper, I think mainly because when I was in middle/high school I could write programs during class and all my teachers just thought I was taking notes. For me my finished code has to be concise and aesthetically pleasing... kind of hard to describe. I tend to look at the overall 'shape' my program makes (in terms of indentation, etc) and get pretty picky about names for variables and such. There is something very pleasing about a piece of code when I'm done with it.

There are no other way to learn 'pure logic', like there is in programming.

I enjoy the mental kick you get from having a "eureka" moment while programming, or gaining a deeper insight into math and logic through their applications. It's also very rewarding when are struggling for hours with a tricky operation, and suddenly your code starts outputting valid answers.

I recently finished implementing an algorithm that finds the longest common subsequence of two strings, based on the Robinson–Schensted–Knuth correspondence, and I was amazed that my code actually worked. The fact that I can use programming to automate difficult math is definitely my favourite part