Structuralism etc. 

In the context of writing about code, many commentators and much existing research concerns itself with programming in terms of linguistics. For instance, Florian Cramer, etc, list examples... and the work of OuLiPo etc (see my map). 
My work is part informed by this linguistic trajectory (Semiotics and Structuralism) but crucially different. See also Andreas's criticism (prompted by Jaromil's earlier one) of my (kind of) work as confusing two semiotic systems... 
[I don't understand this in the following terms: 'Not only all languages, but also all signifying systems conform to the same grammar. It is universal not only because it informs all the languages of the universe, but because it conforms with the structure of the universe itself' (Tzvetan Todorov, Grammaire du Dˇcamˇron, quoted in Hawkes, 1986: 96). According to these 'formalist' principles, human language is the determining model of all over language systems.] 

Furthermore, humans retain the distinct capacity to 'structure': to generate myths and use language metaphorically - what Giambattista Vico, in The New Science (1725, quoted in Hawkes, 1986: 15) called 'sapienza poetica' (poetic wisdom). Jean Piaget tried to define structuralism as containing three key ideas (in Structuralism (1968), quoted in Hawkes 1986: 16): wholeness, transformation and self-regulation. Thus, a structure (think of language) must have internal coherence (only the sum of its parts), is not static or passive (as it endlessly transforms itself), and exists in relation to its own internal laws (as a closed system with no clear reference to reality). These rules might easily be extended to code of course, in that objects cannot be seen to exist independently. Moreover, objectivity is simply not possible as the subject necessarily becomes part of the system by which the object is being examined (as quantum mechanics also proves). Barthes comes to mind in stating that meaning is produced in the act of reading or viewing (from 'The Death of the Author'). Structuralism, as a body of thinking, reinforces the idea that reality does not lie in the thing itself but in the relationships between things in a relational system. Things can only be understood in terms of the organisational structure of which they are a part.

By employing Saussure (in saying linguistics needs an abstract system [langue/competence] that generates the concrete event [parole/performance]), this means that (literary) 'criticism should attempt to account for a "poetics" of writing and reading, conceived as an abstract system of conventions, by whose means "poems", "novels" etc. are generated, and are perceived as such by members of the culture involved'. (Hawkes: 1986:158)
**code version of this quote

This logic is extended through Derrida to the text as being entirely autonomous from the act of writing - writing writes not writers. 

My research - although acknowledging some of these issues and informed by some of its critical tradition (ie. that meanings are produced in the act of reading, see my defence of the author as producer over the death of the author for more counter-argument on this issue) - is more concerned with materiality and the political economy. This line of thinking is exemplified by Fredric Jameson in his aptly titled book The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism (1972, London: Princeton University Press) where he looks for the structures of  consciousness itself, wherein meaning is organised out of elements that in themselves are meaningless (later in Marxism and Form, 1971, London: Princeton University Press, calling for a 'new' dialectical criticism that draws upon formalist/structuralist and Marxist traditions. 

However, the radicalism of any new criticism diminishes as it becomes a new orthodoxy. Although acknowledged (in its own critical lexicon), all criticism serves to deflect from its own ideological underpinnings. At this point in time, this seems all the more pressing in that structuralism's and post-structuralism's 'admiration of complexity, balance, poise and tension could be said to sustain the characteristic bourgeois concern for a "fixed" and established, unchanging reality, because it disparages forceful, consistent and direct action.' (Hawkes, 1986: 155) 
This familiar criticism stands for me (reiterated in Hawkes (1986) 'New "New Criticism" for Old "New Criticism"')... . Not the old criticism of focussing on the content at the expense of form, or details of the author's life or key dates - I hasten to add. But rather, that a work of art is relatively autonomous and should be viewed in terms of itself not outside the work. This As Jakobson puts it: 
'Every work, every novel, tells through its fabric of events the story of its own creation, its own history... the meaning of a work lies in its telling itself, its speaking of its own existence,' (from Littˇrature et signification, quoted in Hawkes, 1986: 100). However, this needs to contain a politics and a sense of its own making - poetics perhaps.

'Poetics' indicates a concern for process rather than mere content, the process by which content is produced. Poetics is important concept as criticism is embedded in the process of making - a theory of practice, a critical practice...   

In the context of programming, my concern is with the production of code in terms of creative labour and the ways this relates to action. There has been a recent turn away from consumption back to production as the focus of critical work (Hardt and Negri), and a recentring of the subject (Zizek). Also issues around material/immaterial labour are of relevance...