Introduction

Even those who have no interest in the playful, aesthetic, and educational dimensions of computing cannot ignore the cultural relevance of code. Computer programs not only function to process and display critical data, to facilitate communication, to monitor and report on sensor networks, and to shoot down incoming missiles - they also have an existence as texts that are read by the original programmer, others who maintain and modify them, and in many cases wider and wider circles of meaning-seekers. We now live in a world where citizens examine the leaked source code that causes our voting machines to function. We find it unremarkable that particular snippets of code written by scientists are quoted in an attempt to demonstrate that climate change is a scam. It is no longer tenable to pretend that computer code is purely technical, without social, political, cultural, or other significant dimensions.

If computer code embeds stories, then every symbol within them helps illuminate historical lines of inquiry, or at least serves as a medium for the playing out of ideas, one which is off-limits to non-readers. There are plenty of significant bodies of non-computational code that help to control lives but are not accessible to those they control: The code of law is a prime example. Although computer programs are "law" in a direct sense only to the computer, they control aspects of the world around us from toothbrushes to airplanes and they embody business and governmental processes.

Traditional wisdom might lead one to believe that "learning to read code" is monocultural, conservative chore. However, in the growing methodologies of Critical Code Studies, computer code may also be interpreted or approached through other means or perspectives. This line of code, while maintaining maximum brevity, manages to represent the fundamentals vital to interpreting a much broader class of programs. It acts as a gate into the worlds of external ideas embedded within computer codes.