Code circulates in, among other settings, discourse networks of code.  Functional or imaginary, uncompiled or pseudo code, in the same language or others, code speaks to code -- the code a person encounters affects the way they read other code.   The process of teaching programmers begins with teaching them classic algorithms.   In their MIT course and in their book, they begin with algorithms or procedures for simple sorting tasks.   Key to their presentation is a sense that there are better and worse ways to go about this procedure.   Such lessons will lead to explanations of "Beautiful code" later in the programming curriculum.   As with any aesthetic area, code is beautiful or kludgy primarily by comparison.  Because code is read against other code, annotations can follow suit.

However, code exists in many states, written for many different purposes.   In the genre of electronic literature known as codework, programmer-artists use programming languages and new creoles inspired by them to create encoded art objects that may or may not compile.  In the case of the Transborder Immigrant Tool, micha cardenas has written a code poem in response to the code itself, using Zach Blas' transCoder anti-programming language.  Juxtaposing cardenas' codework with the code itself demonstrates how his art brings the decisions and narrative of the code into a new light.

Code can also be understood against other forms of code, such as legal codes.  The code for the Transborder Immigrant Tool was being written while Arizona was embroiled in a debate over the anti-immigrant rights bill, SB 1070.  These two bodies of code speak to one another.  Both share similar status as a set of practical directives that execute and express cultural sensibilities.  Also, due to legal challenges against SB 1070, both exist as potential codes, debated largely through "speculative deployment."

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