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Comment by szany | Hacker News Reader

Actually it's a science thing. In a scientific context "code" is understood to mean "program". For example: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22population+synthesis+...

I'm not sure why this is though.

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What an excellent idea: Generate new jargon that's incompatible with the jargon used from the field you suck at.

Perhaps concerned scientists and editors should reject the bifurcation here and take on the lingo of the field that creates the tool they have to use and need to learn better as a first step in learning to program in a more responsible manner?

It's probably not intentional, or even recent. Scientists have been using computers to help solve their problems as long as computers have existed.

I agree about the intentional. Not sure about the recent part. Still incites alarm bells/nails on the chalkboard response every time I see it

We probably do the same thing with terms originating in physics every day, and I'll wager they hate it.

Context matters. e.g. misusing physics terminology in a political metaphor over drinks is annoying but inconsequential. Misusing physics terminology in papers where the bulk of the work was physics, or in an article for ACM about why computer scientists are bad at physics moves from eye-roll to WTF territory.

That attitude seems a bit provincial: the usage may be uncommon in industry software development, but it's not rare in some areas of computer science. For example,

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22linear+alge...

"Code" also has connotations (self-contained, numerical, etc.) that make it distinct from "program" or even "library". A routine in ATLAS is a code, but Microsoft Word is not.

I think you have the chronology backwards. The use of "code" as a mass noun dates to the 1960s at the earliest (actually, I can't find a good example before the 1970s in brief searching), while the use of "code" as a singular noun to mean "implemented algorithm", and "codes" as the plural, dates back at least to the 1950s.

As one of many examples, here's a 1955 survey article compiling a list of "available digital computer codes for nuclear reactor problems": http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_...

My Chronology may still be backwards, but they still should swap over to the language of the mature field of software development's language to better allow themselves to integrate in good practices.

The bifurcation is still harmful to them even if the software usage originated later than the science term.

It seems to be a long-standing shibboleth of scientific computing/Fortran culture. (It's in the third-ed. Jargon File: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/codes.html ) Cray, for example, uses it - http://docs.cray.com/books/004-2179-005/html-004-2179-005/cg... - and here's Guy Steele using it in relation to Fortress - https://labs.oracle.com/sunlabsday/docs.2007/Talks/Track4/St... So it's by no means an infallible sign that the user lacks any kind of high expertise in computing.

Yes, I hear this all the time. I know that the fancy course 6 kids here on HN would poo-poo it, but it's a very common usage in scientific computing. I can imagine the origins and can hypothesize about why it persists (the festering petri dishes of programming culture that is "grad school"), but don't have a definitive answer.

John Tukey is widely credited with coining the term "software" in print in 1958, but I'll wager that "codes" actually predates that.

And even `programming' has lots of uses. Like in linear or dynamic programming. Or even in strength training.

Scientists say "code" because "machine code" is a bit of a mouthful. They say "machine" because their computers used to be people, and an interrupt meant running excitedly into Sir George Everest's tent. If entrepreneurs had invented the machines, we'd call them "electronic clerks".

When the manual is titled "Theoria combinationis observationum erroribus minimis obnoxiae", you know you're dealing with legacy code. In that case it's a pretty cool legacy, though.

Because most scientists write code in Fortran '77, which is interpreted, meaning that "code" == "program".

I would have sworn that Fortran was compiled.

It is.

Whoops, you're right, I'm talking utter crap!

From my experience, the most used languages in scientific programming are Fortran 90, C/C++, and Matlab with a considerable number of legacy codes written in FORTRAN 77.

Also, FORTRAN 77 is most definitely not an interpreted language.

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