diff --git a/chapters/00_intro.md b/chapters/00_intro.md index 08a185b..1e905a8 100644 --- a/chapters/00_intro.md +++ b/chapters/00_intro.md @@ -2,7 +2,6 @@ ```todo - how to quote propperly an introduction from a book series? (software studies) -- find where to put code documentation & developers paragraphs - elaborate on citations ``` @@ -24,25 +23,16 @@ The main focus of this research is to explore software documentation as a surfac A way to situate programming in specific contexts. The first chapter focuses on documentation as publishing surface. Who is reading, who is addressed, and who is left out. - Documentation brings an understanding on software by disclosing its magic. It reveals what can be done with it, and where are the limits. By lowering barriers and creating entry points, documentation broadens participation. By reaching not just beginners, but experienced programmers as well, it affects thinking about software continuously, and from different perspectives. -`[but who's left out ...]` - The second part frames documentation as a crossroads, where different knowledges meet in the making of software. - Documentation is a space that interfaces between the code, the user, the developer, and the world. A space where to welcome different voices: not just engineers, not just experts, not just dudes. A space to acknowledge the massive labor of care besides technicalities, often marginalized by coding culture. The third section is focused on worlding, and the relation between code, documentation practices and political aesthetic. - Here documentation is seen as a surface that could host principles in close contact with algorithms, letting them entangle and shape each other. A way to orientate our instruments towards "non-extractive relationships, but in the meantime, being accountable for the ones they are complicit with." (A Wishlist for Trans\*feminist Servers, 2022) -### Software documentation - The concepts of worlding, political aesthetic, and critical thinking can be applied to all sorts of technical manuals. However, the approaches and methods explored in this thesis are mostly informed by practices related to code documentation. While reading, please bind the terms software, application, program, etc. to code. Software documentation? Code documentation. The perspective of this thesis is more aligned to the docs for [ImageMagick](https://imagemagick.org/script/command-line-processing.php), than to the ones for [GIMP](https://www.gimp.org/docs/). -### For developers - -Another term to democratize (_dismantle?_) here is _developer_. +Lastly, another term to democratize (_dismantle?_) here is _developer_. By stripping down every trace of professionalism and formal education, let's agree that a developer is someone who tinkers with code. No matter at which level, nor distance, nor experience. No matter if for work, for fun, for study. No matter if one is actively involved in the development of a tool, or comes from the user perspective. Ellen Ulman writes that programming is a disease, but the situation is even worse: code is contagious material, touch it once and you are a developer.