If you walk into a garage it can be dirty, greasy and disorganized. It can also be labeled, clean and organized. Hardly considered art
its completely unreasable because all the variable names have been mangled and there is no whire space to organize the blocks. At this point it looks like a puzzle.
If you consider the algorithm an art, I disagree. Algorithms are either more efficient them their predecessors or are efficient for a niche.
If it was purely mathematical, it would all be pretty straightforward.
I was under the impression we were talking about engineers here. But if we are talking from an organizational standpoint, your goal is to have an efficient, lowcost team. Management is not an art just like farming is not an art. There is a right way to do things to maximize money, right way to fo things "ethically" and wrong ways to do things which lead to failure.
Your own personality will often get in the way of your job. It is pretty straightforward because the goal is ultimately efficiency and every "question" has a logical "answer".
If not, there's probably still some art left in management.
Art itself isnt imperfect, every creation has value and is a mix of natures effect on the artist abd the artists own intentions. Imperfect management just leads to turnover of valuable employees, wastefulness and low morale
And therein lies the art. An experienced engineer can come up with simple, elegant solutions that balance those things. Novice engineers struggle to find a good balance and tend to over-complicate the solution.
Crafts are things like coffee mugs or portraits - they require immense skill and can only benefit from creativity, but don't really have anything to say about anything. That doesn't mean they're not good or valuable, though.
There is no "uniqueness" in engineering, there is only a balancing of time, money, reliability, reusability and other purely mathematical concepts. If something is unique then it is often better than alternatives or worse than alternatives. Engineering can be considered a sport much easier that an art.
Art can have seperate equivelents. Like a paintng of a beautiful landscape or a painting depicting pain. Both may have the same price but both are unique. Even two portraits of the same person will be different simply because two individuals did it or how style changes with time.