Coderspeak

Front matter

The language of computer programmers

Guilherme Orlandini Heurich

*UCL

Part IV: Tokyo days 15 After the rain 16 Patch first

17 Supreme beings 18 The end

Glossary Bibliography Index

109 117 125 133

145 155 167 175 185

195 199

CONTENTS vii

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Chris Penfold at UCL Press who agreed that this was an interesting book to write. Thank you for being precise and fair throughout the editing process. I hope you can read my future books in one sitting as well.

Thank you to the Leverhulme Trust and to UCL for jointly funding the research that gave rise to the materials in this book. Being able to focus on an entire new area of research has been very valuable to me and it wouldn’t have been possible without this funding. As Head of Department at UCL Anthropology, Professor Susanne Kiiechler truly encouraged me to develop the project further. Thank you, Susanne: your enthusiasm for the initial idea and your continuous support for this project have been truly inspiring. As mentor to this project, Professor Hannah Knox constantly nudged me to think carefully about what I was trying to say, to be open about ethical questions and to be firm in my opinions. Thank you, Hannah: I’ve learned a lot from you. Managing this project would not have been possible without the help of the best Finance and Research Grants Officer any university department in the world could have. Wendy Chandler, thank you. You’ve helped me so much, always in a kind and honest way.

Workshopping and exchanging ideas in various formats have been crucial to the development of this project. Thanks to Luis Felipe Rosado Murillo, Jan David Hauck, John Pelan, Mose Giordano, Ellen Webborn, Pontus Stenetorp, Jon Corbett, Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Daniel Temkin, Sareeta Amrute, Hannah Knox, Ron Eglash and Chris Ball for their massive contributions to different iterations of this project. Thank you also to Brittany Martin for the invitation to speak on the Ruby on Rails podcast and to Professor Carey Jewitt for the invitation to talk about my research on the UCL Minds podcast.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to the British Library for providing peaceful, beautiful spaces in which one’s thoughts can be shaped into words. Most of this book, from first draft to finished piece, has been written in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room on Floor 3. It’s the best reading room, for there is a water fountain and a toilet nearby.

Thank you to the Arvon Foundation for organising a brilliant course on ‘Writing Fiction and Non-Fiction’. The course provided me with the tools to re-imagine what this book could be; tools that I picked up from the brilliant workshops given by Will Menmuir and Kim Sherwood. Thank you to Ali, Chris, Anita, Kate, Jules, Jude, Jenny, Jazzy, Jay, Julia and Lis for a lovely week of storytelling and lifesharing. Hope we'll meet again in Darkest Devon one day.

Thank you to all the programmers who designed, created and continue to support the development of Emacs. Doom-Emacs has been my text editor since I found out I could write computer code and books in the same place. This research was put to together using Emac’s Org-Roam and the writing has been done, exclusively, in it. If you like ‘second-brain’ tools, remember that Emacs will always be free and open source — whereas the flashy alternatives may not.

If it weren’t for you, programmers who shared their stories with me, this book would have never been possible. You are the kindest, most generous people. You had the patience to listen to my questions and to trust me to handle your data with care. I thank everyone at Upstream, who not only had to endure my questions but also to review my pull requests. I thank the Ruby community, the most welcoming community of all, and I hope to have told a story that makes sense to you.

I was lucky to receive the support of many amazing developers during this journey. One of them, Chris Seaton, left us way too early. He taught me, among other things, the ways in which Rubyists embrace the chaos of computing. Thank you, Chris. I dedicate this book to you.

Writing a book has a been a dream of mine for a long time. I never thought the first one would be about programmers. Nor did I ever think it would be written in a foreign language. But I knew that no one would have supported me as much as Julia did in writing it. Our daughter Rita and you, Julia, are the most important things in my life. I wouldn’t be anything without your love.