Code and Cloth

I keep coming back to the loom when I think about code generation. The analogy predates software. Ada Lovelace wrote that the Analytical Engine "weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves." A programmable machine could turn an abstract pattern into a material result.

Weaving holds separate strands under tension and gives the maker a structure for combining them. Software frameworks do something similar for logic and data. The comparison is imperfect, but the loom makes the relationship between tool, pattern, and maker unusually visible.

Industrialization

The spinning jenny, power loom, and Jacquard machine changed the economics of cloth. Jacquard's loom used punched cards to lift threads in repeatable patterns, moving some of the knowledge from the operator into the machine and its instructions.

That shift created scale and resistance at the same time. Silk weavers in France attacked Jacquard looms, and textile workers associated with the Luddites later targeted machines that threatened their trades. The conflict was bound up with labor, ownership, and who benefited from the increased output, not simply a fear of tools.

Persistence of craft

Mechanization did not erase handweaving. Banarasi silk and khadi in India, backstrap-loom traditions in the Andes, and Kente weaving in West Africa still carry techniques and meanings that factory output cannot absorb into scale. The maker remains part of what the object is.

Software

Early programs often carried the fingerprints of one programmer or a small team because the entire system could fit inside their view. Modern software depends on layers of shared abstractions, specialized teams, and standardized tooling. Those layers let us build systems no individual could hold alone, but they also increase the distance between a person and the thing being made.

The loom

I am interested in software made outside the arena of market share, growth loops, and public metrics. Small programs can exist because one person wanted them to exist. The loom is useful here because it is productive without requiring industrial scale.

Software as soft-wear

Taken too literally, coding as weaving turns "software" into "soft-wear": something fitted to a person, comfortable in use, and allowed to show the decisions of its maker. The pun is terrible. I am keeping it.

Vibe coding: the new loom

"Vibe coding" is Andrej Karpathy's term for staying in the flow of a project while an AI handles much of the implementation. Calling it a new loom is convenient because the model shifts more knowledge into the tool while leaving the person responsible for the pattern, the corrections, and whether the output is worth keeping.

A loom can serve a factory or a single maker. It expands the patterns one person can produce without deciding what those patterns are for. AI-assisted programming carries the same unresolved split, which is more interesting to me than whether the resulting code counts as handmade.