Registers of Code

Registers We know library and application code have different traits. They might even benefit from different styles and language features. An enjoyable REPL experience may require even different things. What else is there? Sociolinguistics gives us register shaped by 3 dimensions: field - the social activity the text is embedded in tenor/relationship between participants mode (spoken vs. written, monologue vs. dialogue, planned or not…) creative coding - high level, exploratory gluing lib abstractions together. You want the best error message possible here REPL - won’t be read again ever, just try stuff and see the result. Tool of Thought; code’s for thinking not delivery. Can be e.g. exploring data or how to use a library. Good naming, correctness and other virtues are wasted here scripts - just gluing components together, correctness=how well it does the job,, who cares about robustness? bugs are often lowcost prototypes - built to learn then discarded (…or get shipped), the goal is…