Chapter 4

Software and its forms

Software is language in the most general sense – a language of description – and it is the compressed form of knowledge, of which the program is the decompressed form. At execution it becomes information rather than knowledge, because the machine transforms patterns without decoding meaning. Text is only the medium, incidental and merely convenient for us. From that the chapter fixes four words the rest of the book uses: software for the squishy, informationy parts that get compiled, used interchangeably with source code; source code for all authored input, including config, shaders, models and assets; program for the compiled artifact; and process for the running program, the moment it becomes physical. The line between source code and asset is technical, not philosophical.