Source Reader
Close observation of code, with critical and informed eyes.
Code is not only written for machines — it can be read. Read like a novel or a historical document: for what it does, what it says, and why it still matters decades or centuries later. It has authors, arguments, and blind spots. It can be elegant or sloppy, bold or timid, generous or cruel.
Automated systems (AI) can now generate software on demand. But someone still needs to judge whether it is right, graceful, or dangerous.
Let's read some code.
Catalogue
(30)
1804
Jacquard Loom Program
Code as physical instruction — before electricity, before computers
1843
Note G ↗
The first algorithm, written for a machine that was never built
1936
Turing Machine
The theoretical foundation of computing, and its cost
1945
ENIAC Programming
Six women programmed ENIAC. They were not invited to the press demonstration.
1957
Perceptron
The seed of AI — killed by a rivalry, resurrected fifty years later
1959
Quicksort
A function that calls itself — invented in Moscow, sorting vocabulary cards by hand
1968
Molnart
An algorithm described in prose, for a program whose code no one kept
1968
Go To Statement Considered Harmful
A two-page letter that ended one era of programming and started another
1969
Apollo Guidance Computer
Code written under mortal constraint, that coined the term software engineering
1973
Unix Pipes ↗
One character — | — and an argument about how software should be built
1978
Space Invaders
The bug that became the game — a CPU too slow to keep up
1982
10 PRINT
One line of BASIC, infinite mazes, no author — how code became folk art
1985
Spanning Tree Protocol ↗
A network protocol expressed as a poem, running in every ethernet switch
1985
ARM Instruction Set
The architecture inside every phone, designed by someone history overlooked
1986
Erlang
A language designed around the assumption that everything will fail
1989
Game Boy Boot ROM
256 bytes. Draws the logo, plays the chime, checks the cartridge. Runs on every Game Boy ever made.
1989
World Wide Web
A proposal marked 'vague but exciting' — and then given away for free
1991
Linux 0.01
Code as commons — ego, gift, and the politics of open source
1995
WikiWikiWeb
The simplest thing that could possibly work — and it became Wikipedia
1999
Fast Inverse Square Root
Eleven lines of black magic that made 3D gaming possible — and nobody knows who wrote it
1999
The Zen of Python
Nineteen lines. The philosophy of a language used by hundreds of millions.
2000
SQLite
The most deployed software in history — in every phone, browser, and plane — written by one person
2001
Processing
setup() runs once. draw() runs forever — code as a medium, designed for people who draw
2005
Arduino Blink
Eight lines that make a light flash — and opened hardware to everyone
2008
Bitcoin — Genesis Block
Code as political act — a message in the coinbase, an author who vanished
2009
Netflix Prize Algorithm
Recommendation as politics — what algorithms decide you should want
2009
ImageNet
14 million images labeled by 49,000 workers, by hand — the dataset that started the AI era
2011
D3.js
Data bound to form — the library that made the invisible visible
2017
Attention Is All You Need
Eight pages, 2017. Every large language model running today is built on this architecture.
2025
DeepSeek-R1
Built and open-sourced frontier LLMs as a side gig, without the best chips