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[...] An amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief deposed by a group of prominent American computer scientists, cryptographers and programmers argued their point:
It cannot seriously be argued that any form of computer code may be regulated without reference to First Amendment doctrine. The path from idea to human language to source code to object code is a continuum. As one moves from one to the other, the levels of precision and, arguably, abstraction increase, as does the level of training necessary to discern the idea from the expression. [...] But each for expresses the same idea, albeit in different ways. (Abelson et al. 2000)
in response to a judge ruling that code is "execution" not free speech (the same way an assassination is not free speech).
just highlights the absurdity of applying the idea of intellectual property to software & its attempts to draw an arbitrary line at some point on the spectrum
[...] Rather than being part of an invisible infrastructure that allowed people to communicate or consume through the Internet, or being a form of expression of ideas, code, Lessig argues, is the sociolegal fabric of cyberspace: "In real space we recognise how laws regulate--through constitutions, statutes, and other legal codes. In cyberspace we must understand how code regulates--how the software and hardware that make cyberspace what it is regulate cyberspace as it is" (Lessig 1999, 6). He goes on to say, "We live life in real space, subject to the effects of code. We live ordinary lives, subject to the effects of code. We live social and political lives, subject to the effects of code. Code regulates all these aspects of our lives, more pervasively over time than other regulatory in our life" (Lessig 1999, 233). [...]
There's probably a typo in the last quote (missing an "any" maybe?). Need to check the source to confirm
[...] Algorithms are not neutral formal procedures. [...] Algorithms themselves are animated: they induce movement between inputs and outputs, and are themselves caught up in diagonal movements between biological knowledge and property value, movements characteristic of the new media biotechnology economy.
[...] the experience of programming seems to be somewhat different. Ellen Ullman (1997) expresses it this way: "You write some code, and suddenly there are dark, unspecified areas. All the pages of careful documents, and still, between the sentences, something is missing" (21). Rather than becoming mechanical or predictable, over the course of time the flows of information managed by software become more dynamic, complex and unstable. Increasingly, programmers interact with worlds that are not abstract, mechanical, formalized, or in any simple sense, globalized [...]
[...] The production of software has for decades been seen as resistant to industrial or Fordist techniques (e.g., Brooks 1995; see Aneesh 2001). The very term "software developer" conveys a certain open-endedness that software development methodologies attempt to close off. [...]
thought: the job of the software developer is precisely the limit of attempts to Taylorize it. like if something can be automated, then that doesn't take really take away from the software developer's job so much as add a tool to their arsenal. all the automatable stuff (as the result of trying to apply Fordist/Taylorist techniques) gets subsumed, submerged; the developer then works on top and treats it as a deeper, more solid base from which they can reach greater heights
at least, that's the way it SHOULD be treated. management may view it differently. it also depends on the capacity of the developer for climbing the metaphorical scaffold of tools (maybe at a certain point it's just beyond their ability, or desire)
idk just a thought (need to find someone who has written about this)
[...] More generally, code as expression and code as action never coincide fully. In terms of the software ontology explored here, code, the material that lies at the core of software, is unstable because it is both expression and action, neither of which are materially nor socially stable. In saying something, code also does something, but never exactly what it says, despite all its intricate formality.