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The Codework Project: Relations between creative writing and computer programming

Baldwin, Charles
West Virginia University

This project explores and establishes parallels between creative writing, more specifically poetry, and software engineering recognizing that both disciplines share the cultural frameworks common to writing practices: both employ a range of writing tools, both require incorporated knowledge and skills, and both involve communities of practitioners in everyday settings. In both disciplines, these frameworks enable human cognitive activity leading to innovation and discovery. By focusing on creativity and by modeling points of intersection and translation, the project provides a better understanding of these processes of innovation and discovery. How do creative writing and computer programming foster creativity? How do they define creative work and the creative writer or coder?

The broader impact of this research is a model for relations between creative writing practices and software engineering. The project creates synergistic relations between creative writers – whether writers of poetry or of code – to suggest possibilities for larger community-building between the disciplines. Furthermore, the project begins to re-model curriculum in light of computer programming as a creative writing practice.


Last modified 16 August 2007 at 6:45 am by haleden