What does it mean to you when someone says something like “code as literature?” Often the implication seems to be that code should be readable — which I take to mean “understandable,” which I further take to me “as a person looking at this code I can map what it’s output will be.” Where my specific hangup enters is that a lot of literature isn’t directly “understandable” in this sense. There are many layers at which to understand literature. How about code? Code as more than it’s outcomes.

I'd assume they're a Critical Code Studies scholar, have probably read a lot of Heidegger, Deleuze etc, and I haven't so I'm probably not going to understand what they're going to say about it

See, there may be my problem. I have read oh so much of both of those… Though, the Heidegger was all out of anger in grad school

Heh, a friend was telling me that Germans wonder why others are so obsessed with him when he was such a nazi

yeah…um…Heidegger isn’t worth reading in my opinion

@Alex McLean any CCS recommendations? All I've read from that world was the

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book that came out a few years back, which I dug, as an aging pseudo-intellectual.

I haven't read much apart from taking part in the working group https://wg.criticalcodestudies.com/

Only a fraction of what is represented by this topic if I understand it, I often use http://rigaux.org/language-study/syntax-across-languages.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code (which seems to be down currently) when thinking about writing languages. I also read older books such as SmallTalk implementation and how it progressed from the early stages (1972) to later (1980). My favorite, although a bit heavy in syntax is the Dylan programming language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_(programming_language) It is sort of an Algol syntax for LISP-type language. I believe Julia is a somewhat of a relative of Dylan for modern languages.

The line about "extra-functional significance" (a) seems exactly on the point and (b) made me think: writing tends to start as pure, boring function. Early cuneiform is all agricultural and commercial records and stuff. Most code today is still pure function, even if its structure is more complicated. Even artsy code still has a heavy focus on the output. Trying to figure out code as literature today might be like trying to predict Les Miserables when writing is just barely out of the tallying-bushels stage.