[HCIdivision17]

Well put.

Personally, I have to use the skills I gained learning rhetoric and analyzing literature to make sense of some code bases. I've seen some shocking ball-o-mud code bases, and the only way to make sense of it was to understand the author(s), though never having met them. And to understand the subtext of the syntax, despite inconsistent application (poor naming convention and mixing ladder and structured text is like reading illuminated medieval engravings). There's code smells and slight variation in copy/paste blocks that belie the history of edits. There are threads woven through multiple volumes, where deprecated interlocks and crossed wires lead to bizarre plot twists. It's easy to think of certain machines as having personalities (or mental disorders, as the case may be). And there's never just an atomic dozen lines of code; at best you can reference five subroutines across two PLCs to describe what may be going on. And like good literature, you can't spoil the ending, as the joy is in the retelling of the story (of how you tracked down what was really happening).

It doesn't have to be a fascinating travesty, but I've yet to see a boring, dull, straightforward control system. Perhaps industrial programming logic just naturally turns out that way.

But it sure feels like Moby Dick, both in size, depth, and the unreliable narrator.