You wouldn’t think that programming languages could provoke a feeling of nostalgia. After all, programming code is the epitome of machine-like expression. Its coldly logical construction is in some ways the very opposite of natural language’s focus on mood, feeling, human connection and frailty.<\/p>\n
Yet today I found myself looking at some code written in a computer language I had not encountered since college, and was swept back in time to an earlier era of my life, remembering people, places, sounds, smells and feelings that had long been dormant.<\/p>\n
I suppose that on some level the mind treats code like any other textural experience — like the intricate veins of a leaf, the sunlight that glistens through a snow frosted window, the smell of fresh mown grass on a summer morning. Anything you’ve experienced can be a trigger for deep memories.<\/p>\n
It just seems strangely ironic when that trigger turns out to be, of all things, computer code.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You wouldn’t think that programming languages could provoke a feeling of nostalgia. After all, programming code is the epitome of machine-like expression. Its coldly logical construction is in some ways the very opposite of natural language’s focus on mood, feeling, human connection and frailty. Yet today I found myself looking at some code written in … Continue reading “Code nostalgia”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8326"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8327,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8326\/revisions\/8327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}