Introduction: Reading Code in the Age of AI

This article introduces the second Digital Humanities Quarterly special issue on Critical Code Studies. It provides an overview of the contributions to the issue while situating them within recent transformations in programming and code reading brought about by generative AI and LLM-based coding assistants. Against narratives that suggest automation diminishes the cultural significance of source code, the essay argues that code remains a meaningful cultural text even when generated or mediated by AI systems and that critical reading is therefore more urgent, not less, in the age of coding assistants. Serving as a state-of-the-field report since the first special issue, the article also surveys recent and forthcoming work in Critical Code Studies, including Alan Blackwell’s Moral Codes, Daniel Temkin’s 44 Esolangs, Nick Montfort’s Narcissystem, Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman’s Intellivision, and the forthcoming Inventing ELIZA by Sarah Ciston et al.