Craft and art exist on a continuum, there is no break between them. Often people who are not or do not know artists imagine that the creation of art entails some magical skill, some special step that is lacking in craft work or engineering work. That some "quintessence" is injected into the process which breathes a vitality of art into the work that would otherwise be absent. But this is a false impression of art. the creation of art is precisely as you say, putting together well-known patterns to build something, sometimes something new.
Wood-working using the skills of working the lathe, the chisel, the rasp is fundamentally the same sort of thing as painting using brush strokes. And both skills can be used to create either a work of art or a work of craftsmanship. It's a matter of skill and intent. Fundamentally though, creating a painting, a poem, or a song is mostly craftsmanship, it's the application of skills to build something in a familiar way.
There's no magic breath of life that elevates a crafted work into the realm of art, rather it's the purpose it's made for and other factors which make that distinction. Something that is considered "not art" would typically be something that is completely unoriginal and has a purely practical purpose.
Art, on the other hand, tends to involve creativity and originality, it tends to not just be for a practical purpose but also to be evocative, emotional, and communicative.
You see, the method and skills of construction are not the differentiator here. Both a EULA and a sonnet can use the same medium (written language) yet while one is purely practical and ordinary the other communicates more than mere facts and details, involves some degree of originality and creativity, and engages the reader at a higher level.
Software dev is a very wide ranging field, so it is difficult to talk about it holistically. However, in my experience it does not fit the description of unoriginal rote work. Often there is creativity and originality, as well as subtlety and fine artisanship. It is a new kind of thing which does not neatly fall into either the manufacturing/engineering/"craft" or "art" buckets, and for that reason it requires different ways of thinking about the work and the workers.
The most important point here is that when you give craftsmen the task of making 20 chairs, they will do so. Some with greater efficiency than others. But this task is nonsensical when it comes to software, because it is only ever necessary to make one of a thing in software, copies are free (or as nearly so as makes no practical difference). Instead the equivalent task would be to make 20 different chair designs. And now it becomes more clear that we are not dealing with craftsmanship, we are dealing with design work. Creative work. The closest analog to which is art. And how do you judge an order of magnitude difference in design work? How do you objectively measure the difference between an Eames lounge and plastic patio furniture? Objectively you can't, but subjectively we are aware that the difference between middle of the road design and top tier design is much more than a single order of magnitude.
Wood-working using the skills of working the lathe, the chisel, the rasp is fundamentally the same sort of thing as painting using brush strokes. And both skills can be used to create either a work of art or a work of craftsmanship. It's a matter of skill and intent. Fundamentally though, creating a painting, a poem, or a song is mostly craftsmanship, it's the application of skills to build something in a familiar way.
There's no magic breath of life that elevates a crafted work into the realm of art, rather it's the purpose it's made for and other factors which make that distinction. Something that is considered "not art" would typically be something that is completely unoriginal and has a purely practical purpose.
Art, on the other hand, tends to involve creativity and originality, it tends to not just be for a practical purpose but also to be evocative, emotional, and communicative.
You see, the method and skills of construction are not the differentiator here. Both a EULA and a sonnet can use the same medium (written language) yet while one is purely practical and ordinary the other communicates more than mere facts and details, involves some degree of originality and creativity, and engages the reader at a higher level.
Software dev is a very wide ranging field, so it is difficult to talk about it holistically. However, in my experience it does not fit the description of unoriginal rote work. Often there is creativity and originality, as well as subtlety and fine artisanship. It is a new kind of thing which does not neatly fall into either the manufacturing/engineering/"craft" or "art" buckets, and for that reason it requires different ways of thinking about the work and the workers.
The most important point here is that when you give craftsmen the task of making 20 chairs, they will do so. Some with greater efficiency than others. But this task is nonsensical when it comes to software, because it is only ever necessary to make one of a thing in software, copies are free (or as nearly so as makes no practical difference). Instead the equivalent task would be to make 20 different chair designs. And now it becomes more clear that we are not dealing with craftsmanship, we are dealing with design work. Creative work. The closest analog to which is art. And how do you judge an order of magnitude difference in design work? How do you objectively measure the difference between an Eames lounge and plastic patio furniture? Objectively you can't, but subjectively we are aware that the difference between middle of the road design and top tier design is much more than a single order of magnitude.