3 ms·
The premise is wrong. Well, it's not wrong, its just that it's premised on the definition of 'literature' being 'high brow writing for the elite' in the sense
by bregma 3y ago
The premise is wrong.
Well, it's not wrong, its just that it's premised on the definition of 'literature' being 'high brow writing for the elite' in the sense of something that can be dissected and analyzed for the sole purpose of revealing something about the human condition. It's true that computer program code is not that kind of literature and no fine arts major is likely to ever write a graduate-level thesis on it expounding the symbolic allusions to the Christian Bible and how it represents society's fear of death and desire for sex.
Source code is, however, literature in the sense that it is written for people to read. Not for computers to read. People. Sometimes other people, often the original author at a later date, but people nevertheless. By definition, that makes it literature.
- lifeisstillgood 3y agocompletely agree. Even writing a book on "software literacy". A small side note - most of us will know a manager who "used to code but stopped when went into management". But none of us know anyone who stopped reading and writing English (German, Japanese) when they went into management. The difference might be that we don't have many companies that can be managed with code, or that a lot of people in management don't need to be there. Edit: VW is an interesting case in point. It does not matter what a manager says, what the design document lays out. what matters is what the code says. And VW CTO knew this so he made the commits to the code base that tricked the emissions tests. That is management-by-code.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]