What counts as code to criticize: Software studies

I’ve heard of “software studies” once before, which is described as “applying humanities methods to problems in software, software culture, and computer science” (by Jeremy Douglas), but haven’t read much on it.  I was just perusing Jeremy’s movie “What counts as code to criticize” (slides are available in PDF) where he contrasts traditional textual programming, natural language programming (which is what he calls Inform 7), and programming patches with Max/MSP.  Honestly, I don’t quite get all that he’s saying, but the idea of using humanities methods to compare and contrast languages like these is intriguing.  Part of what we argue with contextualized computing education is that we are now getting students who think like us.  The students who aren’t in our classes probably don’t think like us.  We need to think about what we do in new ways to figure out strategies to engage those others.

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