project: series 00

When I started web development, I immediately noticed the beauty inherent in code. The patterns of formatting, the use of novel typographical elements like { and [ and the semantics. In the early days of learning, before exclamation marks started to mean "not", recognisable words and phrases would spring out to me, suggesting alternative meanings when misunderstood or taken literally.

These "programming poems" take code from the screen and out of the realm of the programmer. They remain viable logic statements, but are designed also to be accessible to the lay-person.

0.1 php echo

PHP uses the rather romantic term "echo" to write text to the screen.

On this piece, php is used to print rows of seed beads to the fabric. Each row begins on a new line, thanks to \n.

• 
• 
• 
• 

0.2 hello ada

Ada Lovelace is widely acknowledged as the world's first computer programmer due to her work designing programs for Charles Babbage. The programming language Ada is named after her.

Here, a simple Ada program is used to output the universal greeting "hello world".

• 
• 
• 

0.3 39+++

A simple little script to write 39 plus signs. Formatted into a square with each line of characters joined together by yet more plus signs.

• 
• 
• 

0.4 blink

The blink tag - classic pre-turn-of-the-century HTML.

In this context, an html page entitled "wake up" enables five sets of silver balls to blink, like little eyes in the dark.

• 
• 
• 

0.5 window.open

This vintage javascript opens a new window every day, lets you breathe and then closes it again.

• 
• 
• 

0.6 boolean_detector

A javascript lie-detector wristband. Or is it a truth-detector? It all depends on how literally you take the result: is it true because it detected a lie, or is it false because the statement was false?

• 
• 
•