But that is a lie. It's deceptive and misleading. The code states what the computer will do; nobody is contesting that or claiming otherwise. They were pointing out that, although part of what `pi = 3` communicates to a person (that the machine will assign the value 3 to the variable named "pi") is correct, another part of what it communicates (that 3 is close enough to the ratio between a circle's circumference and diameter for the task at hand) may be untrue – and thus a lie.

The programs that people work with in their mind are not the programs (the code) that the machine runs. What the machine does is definitely more important in the moment, but the models that live in the heads of people are more important in the long term. The code that the machine runs is just one implementation, a shadow cast by the real thing from one of many angles.