Programming Language Cultures by Brian Lennon

Programming Language Cultures by Brian Lennon

In this book, Brian Lennon demonstrates the power of a philological approach to the history of programming languages and their usage cultures. In chapters focused on specific programming languages such as SNOBOL and JavaScript, as well as on code comments, metasyntactic variables, the very early history of programming, and the concept of DevOps, Lennon emphasizes the histories of programming languages in their individual specificities over their abstract formal or structural characteristics, viewing them as carriers and sometimes shapers of specific cultural histories. The book's philological approach to programming languages presents a natural, sensible, and rigorous way for researchers trained in the humanities to perform research on computing in a way that draws on their own expertise. Combining programming knowledge with a humanistic analysis of the social and historical dimensions of computing, Lennon offers researchers in literary studies, STS, media and digital studies, and technical fields the first technically rigorous approach to studying programming languages from a humanities-based perspective.

"Programming Language Cultures dispels the hype around computation that colors so much previous analysisImpeccable research and technical mastery combine with the keen sensibilities of a philologist to demonstrate, finally, a welcome intellectual maturity in digital studies."
—Aden Evens, Dartmouth College
"Instead of chasing the latest in artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, or social media, Lennon's approach is to historicize the foundation on which all apps, algorithms, and platforms are built: programming languages old and new."
—Warren Sack, University of California, Santa Cruz

Brian Lennon is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Passwords: Philology, Security, Authentication (2018) and In Babel's Shadow: Multilingual Literatures, Monolingual States (2010).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781503633353
ISBN 10	1503633357
Title	Programming Language Cultures
Author	Brian Lennon
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	Stanford University Press
Year published	2024-08-27
Number of pages	236
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable