you-have-just-experienced-things
@y_h_j_e_t

in the late 2000s there was a failed academic landgrab in the digital humanities called "critical code studies", where non-programmers tried to conduct critical readings of code snippets. it went about as well as you would expect gonna post some of my fav quotes in this thread

"Efficiency is more than the end of computational practice, more than a God, more than an exquisite delight, it is the chimera, the holy grail, the pwnership, the rad ollie, the be all and end all of most programming challenges" http://web.archive.org/web/20140419125509/http://criticalcodestudies.com/wordpress/2009/09/18/on-efficiency/…

"colonize code's virgin soil" https://web.archive.org/web/20130701112334/http://electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/recoded…

"I suggested Quicksort as a metaphor for social organization in communities, drawing out an analogy for the way a neighborhood street or even highway may serve to divide and conquer a demographic" https://web.archive.org/web/20130704150230/http://electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology…
(this is the official CCS manifesto)

this was later dubbed "the programmer's objection" so that it could be dismissed without actually addressing it https://web.archive.org/web/20230201183842/https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/critical-code-studies-conference-week-one-discussion/…

tbh, even when the point they are trying to make is totally inane, they can still write http://web.archive.org/web/20140603211028/https://criticalcodestudies.com/wordpress/2011/06/19/what-does-it-mean-to-interpret-code/#4…

a critical reading of the Anna Kournikova virus https://web.archive.org/web/20230201183842/https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/critical-code-studies-conference-week-one-discussion/…

this is a fun critique of the whole project, which of course was completely ignored http://web.archive.org/web/20080818183447/http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/position_papers/cayley_codework.pdf…

1:46 PM · May 28, 2023