Long post follows, because I disagree with Rands on the specific point of the customer.

By Rands' definition, software is indeed art. But, software must also have some specific use.

Effort seems to be the most concrete way to judge art. Minimalist modern art would be judged to be poor by this standard. Unfortunately, a Van Gogh painting and a really awful similar painting by a college student might be judged just the same by the standard of effort (decisions made, time invested). A more subjective aspect has to be involved; you might say that art is effort directed by skill. That's fine if you are buying, selling or appraising art directly as art, whether it is software or matches.

Usually, though, a customer of software is not directly a judge of effort or talent; they are most directly judge of utility, which is the result of effort and talent that is directed toward serving a purpose. The customer will judge it by whether it serves that purpose. It is unrealistic to expect that a customer will buy your software based only on the effort you put into it.

So, I'm saying that Rands is wrong when he says that the customer will make the decision, "Is it art?" which is to say they will judge it by how much effort was put into it. What is directly judged is the end result of art and talent as applied to the problem solved by the software.

But, I may have somewhat misjudged what Rands was saying, and there is a huge body of subjectiveness and indirection involved in the discussion. There's also a long discussion to be had about "The Iceberg Rule" and object vs. subjective measurement of utility and a million other things. :) Oh well.