Why do we code?
I started writing code when I was 9 copying and debugging BBC basic/assembler games. I started being paid to code about 20 years ago but it wasn't until about 2 years ago with many languages under my belt, that the nature and meaning of what I do dawned on me. Though conceptually simple, I kid you not, the "aha..." moment left me feeling like Neo in the matrix and I thought I'd share that with whoever might be interested.
The word 'Code' means many things from cryptography to a heap of javascript but the one meaning that is most illuminating in my opinion is its use in the definition of ASCII. Here code-points were used to enable computers to uniquely refer to the symbols we were using to communicate with each other predominantly via western typewriters. Since then the symbological representation has grown into Unicode in an attempt to provide a unique code-point for as many of the symbols humans use to communicate with each other as possible. Though in the final analysis the symbological landscape can't all be captured it is the intent of that word 'Code' that matters. It implies the most generic, all encompasing definition of the word as the process of digitising human cognitive concepts such that they can mecahnically manipulated.
These days when we 'Code' we are usually simply digitising a view on societal dynamics. Input points (e.g. forms, touch-screens) capture the narrow range of information required by the 'Code', pass this on to the 'Code' which processes it and potentially changes its self (e.g. Google) before presenting results to the Output points (e.g. screen, bank accounts etc) which ironically are also coded concepts. The code is still a symbolic digital representation albeit of something more dynamic and complex than a Unicode charachter or a cipher-text.
Nothing much new there until you remember how Einstein quantized the universe and made us realize that our very perception of this universe is, in a way, 'Digitized'. Evolution has moulded us into a rather utility focused quatized perception of reality, so much so that the world we is more created by us than absolutely existing regardless of us. Each photon that is detected by your eye is an effective discrete quantization of a world that in reality need not be so. What does all that mean... it means the whole world including you're very self is a sea of Code. That's not a sensational statement of opinion but an unavoidable analytical conclusion build on the nature of our very existence. I guess what else can code create but more code which would go a long way in explaining why we write code. Do you see it?
