Path: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu!spool.maxwell.syr.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.glorb.com!mpls-transit-01.news.qwest.net!207.225.159.1.MISMATCH!feed.news.qwest.net!news.uswest.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <43E196D5.EC1889D3@cookedata.com> From: Bill Cooke X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en,ja MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory Subject: Re: Reminder, blatant ad References: <1138332089.788955.108360@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <1138373835.368733.291150@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1138422731.910703.24170@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1138481476.716986.95560@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1138498404.975129.110220@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1138627515.881224.59700@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> <1138652402.406877.187710@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1138746760.004461.205330@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1138804160.395667.310820@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1138807556.980279.105260@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1138810467.864538.237480@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> <1138851904.344108.63040@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 23 Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 22:21:25 -0700 NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.160.181.241 X-Trace: news.uswest.net 1138857334 216.160.181.241 (Wed, 01 Feb 2006 23:15:34 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 23:15:34 CST Xref: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu comp.databases.theory:35739 JOG wrote: > > This thread has got sidetracked down a very strange line. Software > originally referred to the part of the pc that wasn't hardware, however > this has evolved over the last half century, and software now generally > denotes encoded machine instructions for the hardware to execute. If it > isn't designed to be executed it's just common garden data. Many many years ago i wrote a short piece titled something like "what does a programmer do?" (I was one, and had difficulties in bars explaining myself, and figured all Datamation readers had the same problem.). At the bottom of the page was a line something like "a programmer describes a procedure, in enough detail to be performed by a computer, to another programmer." The forty year update? A software developer is one who writes to another software developer stuff that could be performed by a computer. And it might appear in a form (hardware) which a computer can read. The stuff is software. Why is this important? It's like: what's an oil painting?