https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Obfuscated_C_C...
You're engineering with an artform that's why you see so much variation among the patterns.
Every portrait might be recognizable as a portrait, but every portrait is unique in its details.
"the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power."
Software developers have a tendency to try to claim artist status because what they do is almost entirely meaningless and a waste of time. The exchange of time for money is too transparent so they are unfulfilled and try to imbue their work with meaning. If you want to make art, do it, it can be a hobby. Yet another useless website created to shove more ads in people's faces is not art.
> 2. (countable) Skillful creative activity, usually with an aesthetic focus.
> She's mastered the art of programming.
..
> 7. (countable) Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation.
If that doesn't convince you, compare with such phrases as "The Art of War", "artisan bread", or "liberal arts" (which includes topics like philosophy).
Something that's beautiful in its problem set (doesn't, for instance, act as glue between other, poorly designed systems and thereby reflect their flaws), beautiful in its solutions (doesn't solve too much, nor too little, doesn't make too many assumptions), beautiful in its use (user experience, performance, etc.), and beautiful in its implementation (quality under the hood, no accidental complexity, properly factored, easy to understand and maintain) is quite rare for any problem with a scope larger than say "cat", and even most programs of that size make sad assumptions about things (e.g. are in languages where things are type/memory safe as a practice of the authors' diligence, not verifiable as a matter of course) or have to reflect the complexity of the OS/machines they run on for various reasons (performance, security, etc.).
You know, the 20th century American sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein in his 1953 novel Assignment In Eternity wrote "man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal." And Aristotle said that man was a political animal. I deduce from that that "man is not a political animal; he is a politicizing animal."
That's why we get arguments and debates around there subjects and they become so heated. The truth of the matter is the only way it's possible to compute the answer to any given programming debate is to implement all suggestions in parallel universes and see which one doesn't cause World Was III inadvertently. You can't compute the answer, so you go off hueristics of what's a) what's popular in the wider community (fashion) b) what's popular in your local community (politics) and c) what's popular with you (art).
I need to write a full article on this viewpoint at some stage.