I'm with PG: The distinction between an artist and a hacker is thin to the point of nonexistence.
Don't be fooled by the fact that, say, emacs isn't pretty to look at: Even emacs is a work of art. It isn't just a utilitarian tool for typing stuff, it certainly wasn't designed just to make money, and it is opinionated software that makes a statement, at every level from the implementation language to the architecture to the workflow to the license.
A lot of hacking is performance art. Think: _why the lucky stiff. Think: Zed Shaw.
Being a designer by trade and programmer by accident, I've always found this funny. That programmers have no problem having their work being compared to poetry or art in general. Designers, on the other hand, get enraged on the sole mention that design is an art or --worse-- a craft.
Heh, I'm actually a designer as well, and a printmaker who was vetted for the tamarind institute a while ago. Designers don't want to be boxed into the art world, as modern art is strictly solipsistic, and attempts to make a statement in and of itself and it's context. Design attempts to amplify a statement, to add value, clarify and guide. Saying design is art and craft is like saying engineering is intuition and emotion. There are a shade of in both, but it's missing the point.
Programming on the other hand, is not a strictly visual field which helps any analogy, and while the product is engineering, the act of is comparable to an art. There's no such thing as perfect code, and the hacky little stuff is analogous to the troubled motion's of Jackson Pollck's arms struggling against the constraints of physics to make a statement.
That programmers have no problem having their work being compared to poetry or art in general.
I wouldn't go that far. A lot of programmers have civil-engineer envy and would be incensed if you suggested that what they did was driven by anything other than cold, hard numbers, physical laws, and building codes.
