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---
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categories:
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- GRS
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- Writing
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- Research
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date: 03/11/2022
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description: Outline for the thesis
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slug: thesis-outline
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title: Coding Contingencies
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cover_alt: staphilachiamu
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cover: coding_contingencies.jpg
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---
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<!-- ## Guidelines
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```
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What do you WANT to write?
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What mode of address do you want to assume? How do you want your text to speak to the reader?
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(this dictates the form: essayistic, academic, narrative, non-linier, script; diary; field report)
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Be clear about HOW you want to tell your story.
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Key issues you want to explore (what research questions do these lead to?)
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Please think of only 3 key issues.
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Once you identify these you can begin a chapter outline.
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```
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Discussion
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```
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Software documentation
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Programming software
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Struggling a lot finding a surface between people that develop software, use software, communities concerned find a place that speaks/connects those different worlds
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User manual = documentation
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Surface creates a world around it, creates barriers and possibilities
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What is missing > world of documentation in software development, often just refers to technicalities, create a generous space to create community, different kind of policies/identities in software development
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For project work on a kind of toolkit: a book of spells, recipes, set of tools and practice to think through software documentaiton
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three main issues:
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1. materiality of software documentation (surfaces used to read it make it)
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2. the actors that participate in this idea of software documentation, roles in writing of software
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3. idea of economy around software documentation, exchanges that happen, economy of knowledge (knowledge in developing of codes,...) exchanges of different kind of knowledges, a space to reclaim the importance of voices, value of different voices, beside the technical beside meritopractical approach
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form:
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not sure want to write more?
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want to do the opposite of what is told
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explore the idea of list as a writing surface
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list are a big thing in programming as a structure, data structure, a lot of essays, articles that use code instead of writing (think these things are super-cringe) but would be interesting to abstract some things from code and use them as writing method
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use these kind of technics as a writing method
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template used in industry, offer different kind of approach about documentation and understand what do they say, what do they do
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idea writing as code
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example of that writing: ... replace words is writing
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find a meaningful way, critical way to use the writing machines
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>> do something that my mum could read
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how to make sense of it also for others
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last year started to work with idea of versioning, take already existing text and change some words to re-orient the context > text about graphic design as world buiidling, took the text and replaced some words and became software as world building
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make outlines to start
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start with the structure
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content is about structure
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project proposal more narrative/theoretical
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thesis more practical
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```
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## about the form
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- data structures (list, loop, conditional, tree) as writing machine
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- automatic writing or developing tools to write
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- haunted surfaces or how to re-enchant dry formats
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## about the contents
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ecology of software documentation
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more zspecifically in the context of software programming
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1. materiality
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- what is written?
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- making space for the code in the world and viceversa
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- kind of language, intensity (level of details), accessibility
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- how is it structured?
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- surfaces
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- reference
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- manual
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- forum
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- tutorial
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2. actors involved
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- who has to write it?
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- who gets to read it?
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- who is excluded?
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3. economy around it
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- value of documentation
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- documentation work is work
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- economy of different knowledges
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--- ok v2 ---
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mode of address
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- write with a mix of diverse registry, in order to have several layers of accessibility
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- something that my parents, that are outside this bubble, could understand
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- imagine the tone of a discussion around a technical manual: how can we make it more accessible? how can we make it more clear? some jokes not 100% related. technicalities. how could it work for someone with a different background?
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- imagine a list, so in a way both ultra-linear and non-linear narration
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- develop a writing machine for this. a specific way to write the thesis. that could be (ideas):
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- tagging aesthetic:
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- a lot of short pieces tagged with different categories
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- that could be aggregated by topic, or chronologically or
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-z
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- sortable list
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forms of the list
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- a
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- b
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- c
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- ... (can grow)
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- e
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- f
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- g -->
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<!-- What do you WANT to write?
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What mode of address do you want to assume? How do you want your text to speak to the reader?
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|
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(this dictates the form: essayistic, academic, narrative, non-linier, script; diary; field report)
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Be clear about HOW you want to tell your story.
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Key issues you want to explore (what research questions do these lead to?)
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Please think of only 3 key issues.
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Once you identify these you can begin a chapter outline. -->
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## Coding Contingencies.
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I want to write about worlding around software.
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How do you chose a particular programming language, a coding style, a development environment and ecosystem, an infrastructure where to run the code, and so on? These are not just technical choices, but rather coding contingencies.
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These contingencies are situated in precise contexts. Programming then is not just sharing code, but sharing context. It's providing a point of view and a perspective to look at the world, before attempting to get some grip onto it with a script.
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More specifically, I would like to focus on software documentation as a surface for world-building.
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## Topological writing
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The _topological way to think and write_ (Law, Mol 2002) the thesis is to be found somewhere around:
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- the list form used by LW in the Tractatus,
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- the branching and merging pathways of version control systems, and
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- the content aggregation approach of bookmarking tools such as are.na
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At the moment I can see it as a feed with a tagging system. The plan is to gather contents and curate them in a non-linear fashion, so instead of following the index as a series of steps, imagine to read it as a coral-like creature, with materials forking and interfering with each other.
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These contents will be a mix of diverse registry, from the essayistic to the technical to the anedoctic, in order to have several layers of accessibility. The consistency of the discourse will vary: some parts will be more narrative and some other more scattered.
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1. **Coding Contingencies**
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1. Context of software studies
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2. Documentation as an interface between the code, the user, the developer, and the world.
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2. **Documentation as worlding**
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1. Excerpts from [API Worlding](../api-worldbuilding/), versioned essay from T. Dingsun.
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2. When there is documentation
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1. Language, modes of address.
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2. Who writes? Who reads?
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3. And when there is not
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1. A space to reactivate/reclaim/reorientate code?
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2. Ways of writing, economies of knowledges
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3. Practice proposals
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4. Worlding through documentations mixtape
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1. Excerpts from documentations that world
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2. Individuate approaches and angles
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3. **Software as care**
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1. Cases study articulated through the points emerged from 2.4.2
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1. Soupboat
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2. Hundred Rabbits, Tools ecosystem
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3. Permacomputing Wiki
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2. A list of devices to articulate software documentation as a form of care (project overview)
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## Reference
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- 100r.co. (n.d.). 100R — tools ecosystem. [online] Available at: https://100r.co/site/tools_ecosystem.html [Accessed 18 Nov. 2022].
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- Law, J. and Mol, A. (2002). _Complexities social studies of knowledge practices_. Durham: Duke University Press.
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- permacomputing.net. (n.d.). permacomputing. [online] Available at: https://permacomputing.net/ [Accessed 18 Nov. 2022].
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