📓 Thinking about Coding and the Web

In a post unpacking the development of a database, Ryan Barrett discusses the difference between writing and using code:

I’m a strong believer in Peter Norvig’s maxim that All code is liability. Every line of code takes work to write, maintain, and eventually replace. Every line can have a bug, a security hole, or worse. It’s easy to think our job is to write code, but in practice, I believe our mandate is to create results. Code is our usual tool, but if we can get the same results with less code, or even none, so much the better.

Reflecting on the vagaries of social media, Chris Aldrich calls for a renaissance of humanism:

Let’s band together to create better people-centric, ethical solutions.

Douglas Rushkoff reflects on the change to power and authority over timeL

In the renaissance, the way the will of the elite was inflicted on the people was through law. Today, the way the will is inflicted on the people is through code. (60 mins

It is often stated that code is the new literacy of the 21st century. One of the problems with this is that code and is not the same as literature. As Peter Seibel describes:

Code is not literature. We don’t read code, we decode it. We examine it. A piece of code is not literature; it is a specimenSource

It is interesting to considering this in lieu of Doug Belshaw’s eight elements of digital literacies.