A workshop,
on purpose.
Literature & Code is a software studio in the old sense of the word. One principal, a small bench of trusted collaborators, and a deliberate refusal to grow past the size at which we know our clients by name.
We started Literature & Code because the alternative was another agency, and the world has enough of those. The work we wanted to do — careful, considered, opinionated — does not survive an organisation built around utilisation rates and quarterly targets. So we built a smaller thing, with sharper edges.
We work with operators. Founders, owners, the second-time-around CTO. People who can tell the difference between a good answer and a long one, and who would rather have a brief argument now than a long misunderstanding later. We are not the right shop for committees.
Our work tends to live a long time. We pick stacks for their quietness, name things plainly, and document what we do so the next person to open the file is not punished for our cleverness. When we leave, we leave a thing that can be maintained without us.
The workshop is the metaphor and it is also the practice. There is a bench, there are tools, there is a master at the bench, and there are clients who come because they want a thing made by hand. That is the company. Everything else is decoration.
- Founded
- MMXXVI
- Form
- Independent studio
- Size
- One principal · trusted collaborators
- Where
- Beirut · remote-first
- Stack
- TypeScript · Next.js · Postgres · plain HTTP
- Hours
- Mon–Thu, 09–18 EET
The four books closest to the bench.
- 01
Rework
Fried & Heinemeier Hansson
The grammar of running a small, opinionated company.
- 02
A Pattern Language
Christopher Alexander
On building things at the right scale, for the right reasons.
- 03
The Mythical Man-Month
Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
Forty years on, still the only software book most people need.
- 04
The Elements of Typographic Style
Robert Bringhurst
What every screen still owes the printed page.
If our company sounds like a company you would like to work with —