Mors Codicis: end of the age of codification?

To hear that France might give up on codification would be like hearing that Napoleon was giving up on artillery. Yet this is just what France's principal codification body, the Commission Superieure de Codification, suggests in a recent annual report: "The Commission observes that the age of drawing up new codes is probably reaching its end." The first reason that it gives is the emergence of digital technologies. 1 In that light, I will ask whether the age of codification - the age of legal codes, generally - may be passing. Along that way, I will ask whether a country that has not so far been committed to codification, such as Australia, may adopt these technical developments so as actually to skip the age of codification. 2 For these purposes, I will consider what, within the western legal tradition, has been meant by "code".