simo simo.sorce@xsec.it
On Sun, 2006-02-12 at 01:16 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Everything can be put into words, does this mean everything is an essay?
Sorry I do not actually see the analogy.
It's an example of using a possibility to suggest a certainty. There are many you could try: All footballers can run, does this mean all footballers are running? The tap water can be clear, does this mean the tap water is clear? ...
Listings magazines and machine-readable strips seemed popular types of printed paper programs in my youth. Printed paper is not necessarily a program, but printed paper can be a program. I hope this is clear.
I'm sorry, it is not clear to me. I can't see how printed paper can be a program, unless you mean that printed paper is the media from which the computer reads the instructions, but I think it is so a corner case I tend to exclude it. You may have a program written on paper, but I do not think a book (a human readable book, and by human I mean any human that can read not just programmers) can be ever a program (with program being a set of strict instructions run by a computer).
One of the oldest types of program I've seen are the wirings and switch settings for the Bletchley Park codebreaker machines and the written description of the settings were also called "programs" as far as I can tell. A computer never does anything with a program besides move it between forms according to certain rules. What makes the program any less a program because it just needs converting from pigments on paper to electricity on chips, rather than from indentations on CD or other electrical impulses?