Disagreement with Hayle

I was very frustrated with Hayle's “Speech, Writing, and Code". While I think that he raises and discusses interesting issues regarding the intersection of long existing forms of communication such as speech and writing with the more recent development of programming, I think he stretches his idea too far and glosses over important details for the convenience of his argument.

For example, on page 54, Hayle writes that "dynamics of concealing and revealing come into play through rollovers and the like, re-creating on the screen dynamics that both depend on and reflect the 'tower of languages' essential to code." Internet roll-overs are hardly comparable to the notion of code concealment that Hayle refers to earlier. Additionally, she says that the more that such 'concealment' occurs, the more "plausible it makes the view that the universe generates reality through a similar hierarchical structure of correlated levels ceaselessly and forever processing code." This is troublesome because Hayle takes a great liberty in her usage of the word 'layer'. The 'layers' of which that consist of real, executable code aren't as many as she makes it seem, and her big idea about the universe generating reality through similar structures is incredibly vague and weak.

I do agree with some of the conclusions that she draws, notably that code will not replace speech and/or writing and that they will all co-exist. However, I feel like this conclusion was obvious and her analysis was convoluted and unnecessary. I suppose I just don't understand why she considers speech/writing comparable to coding as a trans-human channel of communication.

One relevant discussion question which stems from Hayle's discussion of programming language theory and evolution towards the end of the paper is, to what degree does the programming language limit human understanding of how the machine can operate? Humans must create programming languages in the first place, but different programming languages require completely different modes of thinking (consider functional programming in languages like Scheme to object-oriented programming in languages like Java. The concept of a )

Sorry to rant, but I'm a C.S. major and I think her arguments are far-fetched.