Vernacular computing as encoded aesthetics for decolonial code intervention

Abstract This paper examines programming languages as cultural and political artifacts embedded within colonial systems of power. Drawing from critical code studies and decolonial theory, it explores how dominant programming paradigms encode assumptions inherited from military-industrial infrastructures, capitalist productivity models, and Western epistemologies. While often framed as neutral tools, programming languages function as infrastructures that quietly structure knowledge, exclude alternate forms of reasoning, and naturalise particular logics of abstraction. In response, the paper introduces vernacular computing as a conceptual and methodological framework for decolonial code intervention. This approach reimagines programming not through general-purpose utility, but through culturally situated logics drawn from oral, poetic, and embodied traditions. As a practice-based articulation of this framework, the paper presents Prāsa , an esoteric programming language based on the Telugu poetic system of chandassu . Rather than relying on conventional syntax or procedural logic, Prāsa encodes metrical constraints as computational rules, enabling a form of programming grounded in rhythm, repetition, and positional form. By situating Prāsa within the lineage of esoteric languages, the paper demonstrates how programming can emerge from alternate epistemic traditions. Prāsa does not offer a universal replacement for existing languages, but proposes a method for composing otherwise, where code becomes an expressive, situated act of cultural memory and aesthetic reasoning. This reframing contributes to emerging discourses on decolonial computing by showing how vernacular practices might inform programming language design without being flattened into utility or performance.