Executable Texts: Programs as Communications Devices and Their Use in Shaping High-tech Culture

This thesis takes a fresh look at software, treating it as a document, manuscript, corpus, or text to be consumed among communities of programmers and uncovering the social roles of these texts within two specific sub-communities and comparing them. In the paper, the social roles of the texts are placed within the context of the technical and cultural constraints and environments in which programs are written. Within that context, the comments emphasize the metaphoric status of programming languages and the social role of the comments themselves. These social roles are combined with the normative intentions for each comment, creating a dynamic relationship of form and function for both normative and identity-oriented purposes. The relationship of form and function is used as a unifying concept for a more detailed investigation of the construction of comments, including a look at a literary device that relies on the plural pronoun "we" as the subject. The comments used in this analysis are derived from within the source code of the Linux kernel and from a Corporate environment in the US.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Science and Technology Studies

Department dc:contributor.department

Science and Technology Studies

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Mawler, Stuart

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Abbate, Janet E.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Allen, Barbara L.
• Reeves, Barbara J.

• programming
• open source
• source code
• comments

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-03012007-160106

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/31388