Code is culture or not?

In our class yesterday, when we discussed that code is culture, Shuti (The Indian girl) said code is about syntax not semantics.

I wan to ask some questions and at the mean time, I want to know if my following understanding is correct or not.

In order to argue if code is culture or not, we need to define what is code. In cryptography, a code is a method used to transform a message into an obscured form, preventing those not in on the secret from understanding what is actually transmitted. And in communications, a code is a rule for converting a piece of information (for example, a letter, word, or phrase) into another form or representation, not necessarily of the same type.(these two definitions from wikipedia) In computer science, code is a way we communicate with and command computer to do something for us. If we consider not only traditional programming pattern, but also the concept of Ubiquitous Computing, code can be any programming language, or our natural language, people's gesture, handwriting, etc. Human's language and actions are culture. Even under the traditional programming pattern in software engineering, it is not appropriate to say that code takes care of syntax only and no semantics content. Every reserved word has a special grammatical meaning, and even the variables defined in a piece of program have meanings too. The genre and value are their meanings. And now several rules for naming variable names are used especially in the Object-oriented programming languages. The variable have meaningful names and properties. And if the code in CS doesn't include the content of semantics, how do we understand it? What is a code in informatics, maybe the way that the message embeds in the sign?

David Hakken: The programs we write are not culturally neutral but instead reflect the cultural presumptions of the writers; this is I think one of Forsythe's points. Not just that there is meaning, but that we are not in control of the meanings we write into programs. Thus, the culture is not just in the context (pragmatics) but also in the semantics.