An introduction to three interrelated domains of the study of computational media as cultural artifacts, or what has come to be called “expressive computing,” with focus on the specifically linguistic and textual elements of computing as those elements most germane to literary and language studies, to cultural studies more broadly conceived, and to both communication studies and the cultural history of computing. We’ll begin with platform studies (the study of the hardware basis for computational media artifacts), move on to software studies (the study of compiled or packaged programs as computational media artifacts) and conclude with code studies (the study of programs as writing and text, and the study of programming languages as cultural artifacts).