Analysis updated 2026-07-03
Read or share Paul Ford's acclaimed long-form article explaining programming to non-technical people.
Submit a correction or improvement to the article text by opening a GitHub issue or pull request.
Reference the project as an example of publishing journalism as open-source to accept community corrections.
| bloomberggraphics/whatiscode | happypoulp/redux-tutorial | forwardemail/email-templates | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 3,734 | 3,734 | 3,733 |
| Language | JavaScript | JavaScript | JavaScript |
| Setup difficulty | easy | easy | moderate |
| Complexity | 1/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 |
| Audience | general | developer | developer |
Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.
This repository holds the source code for "What Is Code?", a long-form article written by Paul Ford and published in Bloomberg Businessweek on June 11, 2015. The piece is a lengthy examination of software and programming culture aimed at general readers. The repository is primarily a JavaScript project containing the article as a web page, stored in an index.html file. The README is brief and focuses mainly on licensing and contribution logistics. Bloomberg Finance LP owns the JavaScript code, which is released under the Apache 2 license. The article text itself is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license, meaning you can share it with proper credit but cannot use it commercially or create derivative works. Third-party JavaScript libraries included in the project carry their own respective licenses. If you find errors in the article text or want to suggest corrections, the repository accepts pull requests and issue reports. Issues tagged with the "text" label are reviewed by an editor, though the team makes no guarantees about response time. Merged changes may take a day or so to appear on the live site, particularly on weekends. The README does not describe the technical architecture of the project or provide instructions for running the code locally. Based on what is documented here, this is a public home for a well-known piece of long-form journalism about software, made open so readers can flag errors and contributors can improve the text over time.
The source code for Paul Ford's landmark 2015 Bloomberg Businessweek article explaining what software and programming culture are, published as an open repository so readers can flag errors.
Mainly JavaScript. The stack also includes JavaScript, HTML.
The JavaScript is Apache 2 (use freely), the article text is CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, you can share it with credit but not commercially or with modifications.
Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.
Mainly general.
This repo across BitVibe Labs
Verify against the repo before relying on details.