Coding Places

Software development would seem to be a quintessential example of today's
Internet-enabled "knowledge work"--a global profession not bound by the
constraints of geography. In Coding Places, Yuri Takhteyev looks
at the work of software developers who inhabit two contexts: a geographical area--in
this case, greater Rio de Janeiro--and a "world of practice," a global
system of activities linked by shared meanings and joint practice. The work of the
Brazilian developers, Takhteyev discovers, reveals a paradox of the world of
software: it is both diffuse and sharply centralized. The world of software revolves
around a handful of places--in particular, the San Francisco Bay area--that exercise
substantial control over both the material and cultural elements of software
production. Takhteyev shows how in this context Brazilian software developers work
to find their place in the world of software and to bring its benefits to their
city. Takhteyev's study closely examines Lua, an open source programming language
developed in Rio but used in such internationally popular products as World
of Warcraft and Angry Birds. He shows that Lua had to
be separated from its local origins on the periphery in order to achieve success
abroad. The developers, Portuguese speakers, used English in much of their work on
Lua. By bringing to light the work that peripheral practitioners must do to give
software its seeming universality, Takhteyev offers a revealing perspective on the
not-so-flat world of globalization.