Scholars and programmers are two groups that know hardly anything about each other, and yet the world needs them to come together, quickly.  Nothing less than the future of art and the existence of literature hangs in the balance, which I’ve tried to make clear to fellow programmers in the past.  Today, I want to address fellow scholars and give five critical reasons why the other side needs us and why we need them.

To begin my project to write history in Ruby, I’ve taken notes on a short passage on the Biblical account of the creation of the world and included commentary that begins to explore the issues involved with writing non-programs in a programming language.  The result is not just notes or code, but a new way of evoking emotions and some early glimmers of a new kind of literature.