  We study connections between self-inversive and self-reciprocal polynomials,
reduction theory of binary forms, minimal models of curves, and formally
self-dual codes. We prove that if $\mathcal X$ is a superelliptic curve defined
over $\mathbb C$ and its reduced automorphism group is nontrivial or not
isomorphic to a cyclic group, then we can write its equation as $y^n = f(x)$ or
$y^n = x f(x)$, where $f(x)$ is a self-inversive or self-reciprocal polynomial.
Moreover, we state a conjecture on the coefficients of the zeta polynomial of
extremal formally self-dual codes.
