I still think it's literature, just that most of it is trash literature. But then again, I was an English major and was trained on how to dissect literature. I realized a while ago that there was a book and a method I learned in English Lit 101 that I think informed how I read code. It's called The Critic's Hornbook, by William Dowling [0]. In short, it's a methodology for meticulously breaking down the meaning of every word, phrase and reference in a text, without resorting to any subjective interpretation. He showed us how, with proper understanding and research, you can find a lot of latent information about what's going on in the text. I find myself doing something similar when I read code, and when I write code.

Code reading is also archeology. There are always layers of code accumulated over time, and you can start to see the minds of the people from years ago. And if you understand the constraints they were under and the assumptions they had, then it can help to understand "Why the hell did they do it _this_ way?"

[0] https://www.amazon.com/critics-hornbook-Reading-interpretati...