Chapter 1: The Impact of Brief Code Snippets

In the realm of technology, even the briefest lines of code can make a substantial difference. A prime example is Ethan Zuckerman's creation of the pop-up ad in 1997 while he was at Tripod.com, a platform allowing users to create personal web pages for free. To generate revenue, Tripod placed advertisements alongside these pages. However, advertisers often found their ads appearing next to inappropriate content, which was problematic.

Zuckerman was tasked with finding a solution to separate the ads from this content. His ingenious, albeit unconventional, fix involved a single line of JavaScript code that created a new pop-up window for the ad. This way, the ad would not be directly linked to any specific user page, but would instead hover independently on the screen. The code was simple:

window.open('http://tripod.com/navbar.html', "width=200, height=400, toolbar=no, scrollbars=no, resizable=no, target=_top");

This line instructed the browser to generate a new window measuring 200 pixels by 400 pixels, devoid of toolbars or scrollbars, and layered on top of any existing pages. While it was a straightforward solution, it had far-reaching consequences. Soon, many commercial websites adopted Zuckerman's idea, leading to an overwhelming influx of pop-up ads across the internet. A colleague from the early 2000s once shared that a significant portion of his download site's revenue stemmed from adult-themed pop-up ads.

Certainly, pop-up ads have become a common annoyance, and many now rely on browsers equipped with tools to block them. Zuckerman himself reflected on his creation as a line of code that made the world a noticeably worse place.

Chapter 2: The Power of Short Code

My introduction to Zuckerman's story came from an essay he penned for You Are Not Expected To Understand This: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World, a captivating collection edited by Torie Bosch, exploring lines of code that dramatically altered our society. The brevity of many of these snippets stands in stark contrast to popular perceptions that coding must be extensive and complex. Hollywood often portrays programmers as typing furiously, generating vast amounts of code.

Yet, Google’s original breakthrough, its “PageRank” algorithm from the 1990s, exemplifies how impactful code can be succinct. This algorithm determined the significance of web pages based on the number and quality of links pointing to them. It’s a relatively brief piece of code, with numerous renditions created in Python that span only a few dozen lines. While tech giants like Google rely on extensive codebases for their operations, the most transformative code can often be quite concise.

The book features a variety of intriguing examples, including a chapter by Charlton McIlwain on the “police beat algorithm” from the late 1960s. This algorithm aimed to predict crime hotspots, allowing law enforcement to allocate resources more effectively. However, it inadvertently reinforced racial biases, as already over-policed neighborhoods saw increased patrols, leading to more arrests and a continuous cycle of targeting.