1. Code as Praxis
Prof Alvarado
MDST 3705
29 January 2013

2. Business
• Please create Posts, not Comments
• Quiz 1 to be posted next Tuesday
• New materials on the site
– Requirements
– Schedule later today
• Concerns about coding level
– Media Studies
– Computer Science

3. Review
• Code, like language, both assumes a
world and constructs worlds
• 10 PRINT showed this
– Close reading of the line of code
– The pattern that the code generated
• Word patterns (an example)
– http://people.virginia.edu/~rca2t/MDST3705/pl
ay/sara.php
• Another example is Conway’s Game of
Life
– Anyone heard of it?

4. CONWAY’S GAME OF LIFE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcuBvj0pw-E

6. Very simple rules and structures
Complex and unpredictable results
An example of “emergence”
This is what Barricelli saw …

7. Coding as Hacking

9. But first, what’s a hacker?

10. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hacker

11. http://www.learnersdictionary.com/search/hacker

12. How is hacking like painting?

13. Hacking is a form of creation or building
The code itself
The effects of the code

14. Are creativity and logic
incompatible?

15. Ginevra de Benci
Leonardo da Vinci
c. 1475

16. What is the relationship between
doing and knowing?
(Ramsay’s argument)

17. According to Ramsay, scholars who
write programs learn something
about knowledge and meaning that
others do not
(He created a big stink in saying so.)

19. “Praxis,” which is German for practice,
refers to a theory of knowledge
This theory holds that only knowledge
based in and oriented to action is valid
Assocaited with Marxism, but also with
American Pragmatism (Perice, James,
Dewey)

20. How is hacking not like painting?

21. Hackers and painters are also at
odds …
Plato banished the poets (which
included painters) in favor of
philosophers (whose descendants
are computer scientists)

22. Code and Plato’s Cave

24. Coding and painting, literally speaking,
use different “parts” of the brain
e.g. Visual vs. Syntactic
People skilled at one are not
usually skilled at the other

25. The code reflects this division of labor
Good software is always the
collaboration of “hackers” and
“painters”
Graham’s implicit point is that hackers
and painters can get along because they
both have a creator’s approach to
knowledge

27. } PAINTERS
} CODERS

28. The nature and structure of
programming languages reflects
this division of labor

29. Code Review

30. BASIC TEMPLATE FOR HTML

31. HTML + CSS

32. HTML + CSS + PHP

33. PHP Values
• Strings are in quotes
– $foo = “BAR”;
– $foo = „BAR‟;
• Double quotes mean you can put variables
inside the string
– $foo = “BAR $baz”;
• Numbers have no quotes
• Booleans have no quotes
– true
– false

34. PHP Operators
• Numeric
+-/*%
• Strring
. (the “dot” operator)
e.g. “This ” . “and that” = “This and that”
• Boolean
&& || < > == != <= >=
and or xor
e.g. if ($x < $y) { … }

35. Regarding Truth
• The “true” is that which has a positive or
negative value
• The “false” is that which has a no value,
other 0 or an empty string