Research questions
We can now turn to some of the gaps and questions left by this review. These can be grouped under three broad areas: dissonant aesthetic fields, lack of correspondance between empirical investigations and theoretical frameworks, and an absence of close-reading of program texts as expressive artifacts.
First, we can see that there are different aesthetic fields referred to when assessing aesthetics in source code. By aesthetic field, we mean the set of medium-specific symbol systems which operate coherently on a stylistic and thematic level. The main aesthetic fields addressed in the context of source code are those of literature, architecture as well as craft and mathematics. Each of these have specific ways to structure the aesthetic experience of objects within that field. For instance, literature can operate in terms of plot, consonance or poetic metaphor, while architecture will mobilize concepts of function, structure or texture. While we will reserve a more exhaustive description of each of these aesthetic fields in
Beauty and understanding
, the first gap to highlight here is how these multiple aesthetic fields are used to frame the aesthetics of source code, without this plurality being explicitely addressed. Depending on which study one reads, one can see code as literature, as architecture, as mathematics or as craft, and there does not seem to be a consensus as to how each of these map to various aspects of source code.
Second, we can see a disconnect between empirical and theoretical work. The former, historically more present in computer science literature, but more recently finding its way into the humanities, aims at observing the realities of source code as a textual object, one which can be mined for semantic data analysis, or as a crafted object, one which is produced by programmers under specific conditions and replicated through examples and principles. Conversely, the theoretical approach to code, focusing on computation as a broad phenomenon encompassing engineering breakthroughs, social consequences and disruption of traditional understandings of textuality, is rarely confronted with the concrete, physical manifestations of computation in the form of source code.
In consequence, there are theoretical frameworks that emerge to explain software (e.g. computation, procedurality, protocol), but no comprehensive frameworks which tend to the aesthetics of source code. In the light of the history of aesthetic philosophy, literature studies and visual arts, defining such a precise framework seems like an elusive goal, but it is rather the constellation of conflicting and complementing frameworks which allow for a better grasp of their object of study through a dialectical approach. In the case of the particular object of this study, the establishment of such framework taking into account both the specifically textual dimension of source code and the various practices of all sorts of programmers is yet to be done. Following the software development and programming literature, such a framework could productively focus on the role and purpose that aesthetics play within source code, rather than assuming their autotelic nature as art-objects.
Finally, and related to the point above, we can identify a methodological gap. Due to reasons such as access and skill, close-reading of source code from a humanities perspective has been mostly absent, until the recent emergence of fields of software studies and critical code studies. The result is that many studies engaging with source code as a literary object did not provide code snippets to illustrate the points being made. While not necessary per se , I argue that if one establishes an interpretative framework related to the nature and specificity of software, such a framework should be reflected in an examination of one of the main components of software—source code. The way that this gap has been productively addressed in recent years has primarily been done through an understanding of code as a part of broader socio-technical environments, inscribing it within platform studies. This focus on the context in which source code exists therefore leaves some room for similar approaches with respect to its textual qualities. Despite N. Katherine Hayles's call for medium-specificity when engaging with code (
author, year)
, it seems that there has not yet been close-readings of a variety of program texts in order to assess them as specific aesthetic objects, in addition to their conceptual and socio-technical qualities.
Following this overview of the state of the research on this topic, and having identified some gaps remaining in this scholarship, we can now clarify some of the problems resulting from those gaps with the following research questions.
What does source code have to say about itself?
The relative absence of empirical examination of its source component when discussing code does not seem to be consistent with a conception of source code as a literary object. As methodologies for examining the meanings of source code have recently flourished, the techniques of close-reading , as focusing first and foremost on "the words on the page" (
Richards, 1930)
Practical Criticism by I. A. Richards, 1930. [link]
have been applied for extrinsic means: extract what the lines of code have to say about the world, rather than what they have to say about themselves, about their particular organization as source files, as typographic objects or as symbol systems expressing concepts about the computational entities they describe. In this sense, it is still unclear how the possible combinations of control flow statements, abstraction layers, function signatures, data types, variable declaration and variable naming, among other syntactic devices, enable program texts to be expressive. While close-reading will be a useful heuristic for investigating these problems, it will also be necessary to question the unicity of source code, and take into account how it varies across writers and readers and the social groups they constitute. This problem therefore has to be modulated with respect to the socio-technical environment in which it exists—it will then be possible to highlight to what extent the aesthetics of source code vary across these groups, and to what extent they don't.How does source code relate to other aesthetic fields?
Multiple aesthetic fields are being mapped onto source code, allowing us to grasp such a novel object through more familiar lenses. However, the question remains of what it is about the nature of source code which can act as common ground for approaches as diverse as literature, mathematics and architecture, or whether these references only touch on distinct aspects of source code. When one talks about structure in source code, do they refer to structure in an architectural sense, or in a literary sense? When one refers to syntactic sugar in a programming language, does this have implications in a mathematical sense? This question will involve inquiries into the relationship of syntax and structure, of formality and tacitness, of metaphor and conceptual mapping, and in understanding of how adjectives such as elegant , clear and simple might have similar meanings across those different fields. Offering answers to these questions might allow us to move from a multi-faceted understanding of source code towards a more specific one, as the meeting point for all these fields, source code might reveal deeper connections between each of those.
How do the aesthetics of source code relate to its function?
The final problem concerns the status of aesthetics in source code not as an end, but as a means. A cursory investigation on the topic immediately reveals how aesthetics in source code can only be assessed only once the intended functionality of the software described has been verified. This stands contra to the way of a rather traditional opposition between beauty and functionality, and therefore suggests further exploration. How do aesthetics support source code's functional purpose? And are aesthetics limited to supporting such purpose, or do they serve other purposes, beyond a strictly functional one? This paradox will relate to our first problem, regarding the meaning-making affordances of source code, and touch upon how the expressiveness of formal languages engage with different conceptions of function, therefore relating back to Goodman's concept of the languages of art, of which programming languages can be part of. Particularly, this study will investigate how aesthetic configurations aim at making complex concepts understandable.
