And why all the panic about "open" source codes, and them being revealed?
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (21)
sorted by:
It's just the human readable code prior to being compiled into machine readable code or an executable format. Literally just the code people write for the application to work. If it's revealed to the public then we can see how it works and determine if there is any political bias in the algorithms.
So are the terms "code" and "source code" interchangeable?
While technically very incorrect, if you are not trained in computer science and only focus on the human element of writing code, the two could be interchangeable. When people say "learn to code" they generally mean writing source code.
Humans speak English (the only language that matters of course). Computers speak Japanese (binary). Humans write in English and have it translated (compiled) into Japanese. The English is the source code. The Japanese is the filthy derivative code nobody cares about except the Japanese (computer).
When you run a program on your computer you generally only have access to the Japanese version. Fuck trying to translate that shit backwards.
Thank you. That's helpful.
Maybe. It depends on the context. "Source code" implies something that humans can read and write. It can also imply having all the programming files necessary for building or compiling a particular application. For example, you can go to github.com and download the source code for all kinds of applications.
Simply using "code" can imply those things too, but it can be ambiguous. It can mean machine code, or binary code, or just a piece of code, etc.
HTH!
It does. I got a bunch of good answers, and this one adds useful context. Funny thing is I had to look up HTH.
Source code is typically commented and much more readable, easy to follow and understand what is going on, for a programmer. Its the code the programmer writes and reads.
Code could be the same but also might be the compiled code, which is stripped of helpful comments and nicely named variables etc, so is much harder to understand even for a programmer. Its the code the computer writes, based on the source code, and reads into its memory to do the calculating and controlling of monitors and whatnot.
Thank you!
Yes, source code and code can be used interchangeably. Whether it is human readable or machine language doesn't matter, code is code. An applications source code can be open sourced or closed source. Open source means it is 100% available to anyone to read/download/alter. Linux is open source. Windows is closed source. Musk is talking about making Twitter's closed source code open.
Thank you!