Bloomberg Businessweek releases code issue

Bloomberg Businessweek released Thursday The Code Issue, a special double issue containing a single essay by writer and programmer Paul Ford.

Recognizing that the world now belongs to people who code, and those who don’t understand it will be left behind, the issue is devoted to demystifying code and the culture of the people who make it.

Ford’s 38,000-word essay “What Is Code?” lives cross-platform in print, on the Bloomberg Business website, mobile, Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Radio, and at the upcoming Bloomberg Technology Conference: Code and the Corner Office.

Code directs the fate of everything from media to e-commerce to banking, and is arguably the most important phenomenon for the 21st century businessperson to understand. Yet it remains an intimidating mystery to most execs.

In The Code Issue introduction, Bloomberg Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel writes, “Software has been around since the 1940s. Which means that people have been faking their way through meetings about software, and the code that builds it, for generations… ignorance is no longer acceptable.”

Tyrangiel says of The Code Issue, “There’s some technical language along with a few pretty basic mathematical concepts. There are also lots of solid jokes and lasting insights. It may take a few hours to read, but that’s a small price to pay for adding decades to your career.”

A programmer for over 20 years, Paul Ford explains in his essay “Code has been my life, and it has been your life, too. It is time to understand how it all works…Every month, code changes the world in some interesting, wonderful, or disturbing way.”