What Is Code?
David M. Berry · Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks · 2011
In this chapter, I want to consider in detail the problem we are confronted with immediately in trying to study computer code. The perl poem, Listen , shown below, demonstrates some of the immediate problems posed by an object that is at once both literary and machinic (Hopkins n.d.). Source code is the textual form of programming code that is edited by computer programmers. The first difficultly of understanding code, then, is in the interpretation of code as a textual artefact. It forms the first part of the development process which is written on the computer and details the functions and processes that a computer is to follow in order to achieve a particular computational goal. This is then compiled to produce executable code that the computer can understand and run. The second difficulty is studying something in process, as it executes or ‘runs’ on a computer, and so the poem Listen has a second articulation as a running program distinct from the textual form. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.