It's such an odd little subcultural quirk that Fortran (really HPC) people call programs and libraries "codes". Most software folks refer to "code", as if it was a substance like sand or water, and use other words for specific units of "code" (programs, libraries, modules).

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pmcgoron 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you want to peer into an alternative reality / funhouse mirror of programming terms, you should look at ALGOL 68. For instance, types are called "modes".

https://jemarch.net/a68-jargon/

(There are also "incestuous unions", which is the actual term used in the spec.)

	▲	Onavo 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		From the docs, an incestuous union is the equivalent of a packed union in C? Well, you gotta be packing' to be incestuous :D

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certik 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Author of the blog post. It's just being a non-native speaker and writing the blog post by hand shows these little mistakes. I've been using the terms "code" and "codes", but you might very well be right that my usage is not entirely correct. I'll ask native speakers what the proper usage is here.

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dented42 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I guess when you’ve been calling it that before everyone else you’re allowed. Sort of how Common Lisp calls threads ‘processes’.

	▲	Jtsummers 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Sort of how Common Lisp calls threads ‘processes’. Can you point to any documentation on that? It's not in the hyperspec and it doesn't seem to be in Common Lisp the Language, 2nd Edition (using the index)
	▲	pjmlp 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		As does Smalltalk and Erlang, and to make things more interesting, all three mean something not exactly the same.

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stackghost 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Fortran (really HPC) people call programs and libraries "codes".

I think it's a European engineering thing that just sort of caught on, actually. For example when I was in undergrad, my 4th-year computational fluids prof made us use "Code Aster"[0] and "Code Saturne"[1] which are both made by a French lab, I believe. Most of the usage of "code as a countable noun" that I've encountered has origins in English-as-a-second-language projects.

[0] https://code-aster.org/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Saturne

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jraph 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The uncountable aspect of many English words is highly unintuitive to many of us.

Information. Code. Software. Hardware.

I suspect many people don't even know they are uncountable.

I suppose for software we should just use programs or applications. But that's slightly more specific than software!

In French we can have both: le logiciel as some uncountable mass, or un/des/N logiciels if you need to count them.

Why the hell do I need to cut information into pieces to count it?

Both English and French are cursed languages, but English loses on this one.

And then there's the trousers. And now you need to say "a pair of" to talk about one unit of them. Though to be completely fair we have that for the glasses (lunettes) and the scissors as well.

	▲	Joker_vD 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I suspect many people don't even know they are uncountable. Well, most English speakers may not know the term, but they can feel the concept just fine. > In French we can have both: le logiciel as some uncountable mass, or un/des/N logiciels if you need to count them. This mostly works in English (and other European languages) as well, e.g. "Two teas/beers, please" etc. But in English this turn of phrase is much more restricted which is indeed a shame. And let's not even start with pluralia tantum.
	▲	stackghost 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>In French we can have both: le logiciel as some uncountable mass, or un/des/N logiciels if you need to count them. Mais est-ce qu'on dit "les codes"? Selon moi ça ne marche pas.

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webdevver 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

in the ngspice user manual, they call circuit descriptions an "input deck"

https://ngspice.sourceforge.io/docs/ngspice-manual.pdf

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briaoeuidhtns 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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