Understanding of source code in language: Contribution of philosophical hermeneutics to the critical code studies

The article discusses the attempt to understand a source code under the conception of philosophical hermeneutics guided by language. Based on a confrontation between H.-G. Gadamer’s and Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy, our main goal would be searching for the essence of the source code in language. Thus, a closer look is taken into cultural symbols, natural language, and artificial languages. Especially, there would be discussed the problem of abstraction, linguistic community, self-forgetfulness, vitality of formal languages, and display of individuality. This is where the cultural layer of the code can be traced, hence we may find our world-view verbal in nature. In line with the Critical Code Studies approach, in this article, the source code is treated as text. Because of its complexity, the issue should be studied within philosophical inquiry and computer science knowledge. Hence, the perspective developed here goes back to origins and provides a philosophical foundation for Critical Code Studies thinking. The article presents academics with a philosophical challenge: how to understand the source code with an adaptation of a philosophy rejecting artificiality. With philosophical reflection, the source code gains additional meaning and experiences increase in being. Understanding happens in language, which realizes as discourse.

Writing With Data: A Study of Coding on a Data-Journalism Team

Coding has typically been understood as an engineering practice, where the meaning of code has discrete boundaries as a technology that does precisely what it says. Multidisciplinary code studies reframed this technological perspective by positing code as the latest form of writing, where code’s meaning is always partial and dependent on situational factors. Building out from this premise, this article theorizes coding as a form of writing with data through a qualitative case study of a web developer’s coding on a data-journalism team. I specifically theorize code as a form of intermediary writing to examine how his coding to process and analyze data sets involved the construction and negotiation of emergent problems throughout his coding tasks. Findings suggest how he integrated previous coding experience with an emerging sense of how code helped him write and revise the data. I conclude by considering the implications of these findings and discuss how writing and code studies could develop mutually informative approaches to coding as a situated and relational writing activity.

Impact of COVID-19 on the volume of emergency CT studies in a neuro-trauma reference center

Rationale and Objectives The covid-19 pandemic has been a challenge for health systems, given the large number of affected patients and mortality rates. However, it has conditioned a decrease in non-covid imaging studies. Our intention is to quantify the decrease in emergency neuroimaging studies caused by the pandemic. Materials and Methods A retrospective study was carried out on the number of CTs requested from the emergency department. The total amount of CT performed, brain-CT, and the CT studies for stroke code were quantified, week by week. The analogous weeks of 2019 and 2020, before and after the declaration of the state of alarm, were compared. Results The total amount of CTs requested from the ED during 2020 in weeks 1-12 was 1266, and decreased compared with 1745 exams during weeks 1-12 in 2019 (p value 0.045). During weeks 1-12 in 2020, 947 brain-CTs were performed, compared to 1328 in 2019 (p value 0.032). When comparing the 1-6 weeks in 2020 with those affected by the pandemic, a decrease was observed from 887 emergency CTs to 419 (p value 0.002). There was a decrease (p value 0.002) in the number of brain-CTs, from 664 in weeks 1-6, to 303 in weeks 7-12. No statistically significant differences were found in the number of stroke code studies. Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a huge drop in urgent imaging studies during the state of alarm at a reference neurotrauma center, except for stroke code studies. Keywords: Covid-19; Neuroimaging; Stroke imaging; Emergency imaging; CT

Digital geographies, feminist relationality, Black and queer code studies: Thriving otherwise

Digitality is deeply implicated in sociospatial processes of exclusion, adverse incorporation, impoverishment and enrichment. Theorizing digital practices of life and thriving is politically and epistemologically urgent, and more robustly intersectional theory in digital geographies scholarship offers crucial pathways. I argue for theorizing digital geographies at the intersection of feminist relationality and Black, queer and feminist code studies. I demonstrate these theoretical horizons through an analysis of ‘glitch politics’ that refuse normative digital-social-spatial relations of technocapitalist urban life, and catalyze sociospatial relations of thriving otherwise, drawing examples from digital practices of street newspapers sold by unsheltered people in cities worldwide.