Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Source Code |
Source CodeNoun1. Program instructions written as an ASCII text file; must be translated by a compiler or interpreter or assembler into the object code for a particular computer before execution. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
| Domain | Definition |
Computing | Source code |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Thus, source code is either used to produce object code, or to be run by an interpreter. Modifications are not carried out on object code, but on source code, and then converted again.
An other important purpose of source code is for the description of software. Also, source code has a number of other uses. It can be used as a tool of learning; beginning programmers often find it helpful to review existing source code to learn about programming techniques and methodology. It is also used as a communication tool between experienced programmers, due to its (ideally) concise and unambiguous nature. The sharing of source code between developers is frequently cited as a contributing factor to the maturation of their programming skills. Source code can be an expressive artistic medium; consider, for example, obfuscated code or PerlMonks.Org.
Source code is a vital component in the activity of porting software to alternative computer platforms. Without the source code for a particular piece of software, portability is generally so difficult as to be impractical and even impossible. Programmers frequently borrow source code from one piece of software to use in other projects, a concept which is known as Software reusability.
The source code for a particular piece of software may be contained in a single file or many files. A program's source code is not necessarily all written in the same programming language; for example, it is common for a program to be written primarily in the C programming language, with some portions written in Assembly language for optimization purposes. It is also possible for some components of a piece of software to be written and compiled separately, in an arbitrary programming language, and later integrated into the software using a technique called library linking.
Moderately complex software customarily requires the compilation or assembly of several, sometimes dozens or even hundreds, of different source code files. This complexity is reduced considerably by the inclusion of a Makefile with the source code, which describes the relationships among the source code files, and contains information about how they are to be compiled. The Revision control system is another tool frequently used by developers for source code maintenance.
Software, and its accompanying source code, typically falls within one of two licensing paradigms: Free software and Proprietary software. Generally speaking, software is free if the source code is freely available, and proprietary if the source code is kept secret, or is privately owned and restricted. The provisions of the various copyright laws are often used for this purpose, though trade secrecy is also relied upon. For a further discussion of the differences between these paradigms, and the divisions within them, see software license.
As of 2003, court systems are in the process of deciding whether source code should be considered a Constitutionally protected form of free speech in the United States. Proponents of the free speech argument claim that because source code conveys information to programmers, is written in a language, and can be used to share humour and other artistic pursuits, it is a protected form of communication. The opposing view is that source code is functional, more than artistic speech, and is thus not protected by First Amendment Rights of the U.S. Constitution.
One of the first court cases regarding the nature of source code as free speech involved University of California mathematics professor Dan Bernstein, who had published on the internet the source code for an encryption program that he created. At the time, encryption algorithms were classified as munitions by the United States government; exporting encryption to other countries was considered an issue of national security, and had to be approved by the State Department. The Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the U.S. government on Bernstein's behalf; the court ruled that source code was free speech, protected by the First Amendment.
In 2000, in a related court case, the issue was again brought under some scrutiny when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sued the 'hacker' magazine 2600 and a number of other websites for distributing the source code to DeCSS, an algorithm capable of decrypting scrambled DVD discs. The algorithm was developed to allow people to play legally purchased DVDs on the Linux operating system, which had no DVD software at the time. The US District court decision favored the MPAA; 2600 magazine was prohibited from posting or linking to the source code on their website. This ruling was widely considered a victory for the supporters of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as it established a legal precedent for the notion that source code is not Constitutionally protected free speech. It was affirmed by the Appeals Court and as of late 2003 is being appealed to the US Supreme Court.
See also: Programming language, Legacy code
Organization
Licensing
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External link
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Source code."
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Expressions using "source code": sequence identifier source code ♦ source code escrow. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "source code"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Danish | kilde-kode, kildekode. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | broncode. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | lähdeohjelma, lähdekoodi, alkuperäiskoodi, alkukielinen ohjelma. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
French | code source, code en langage source. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
German | Quellencode, Quellcode, Ausgangscode. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | κώδικας πηγής, πρωτογενήσ κώδικασ, πηγαίος κώδικας. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | codice sorgente (native code). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | ourcesay odecay código fonte, código em linguagem fonte. (various references) código fuente, código en lengua fuente. (various references) källkod (sourcecode). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Misspellings | |
"Source Code" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: scource code. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "c-c-d-e-e-o-o-r-s-u" | |
-2 letters: decorous, succored. | |
-3 letters: coerced, coerces, coursed, recodes, recused, reduces, rescued, scoured, secured, seducer, sourced, succeed. | |
-4 letters: ceders, cercus, cereus, cerous, ceruse, codecs, coders, coerce, cooeed, cooees, cooers, course, credos, creeds, crocus, crouse, cruces, crudes, cursed, decors, deuces, douser, durocs, educes, erodes, escudo, occurs, odours, recces, recode, recuse, redoes, reduce, rescue, reused, rodeos, roosed. | |
| Words containing the letters "c-c-d-e-e-o-o-r-s-u" | |
+5 letters: overconstructed. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)53 6F 75 72 63 65 43 6F 64 65 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01010011 01101111 01110101 01110010 01100011 01100101 00100000 01000011 01101111 01100100 01100101 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)S o u r c e   C o d e |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0053 006F 0075 0072 0063 0065 0043 006F 0064 0065 |
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)538187846971237817071 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Expressions | 5. Expressions: Internet 6. Translations: Modern 7. Derivations 8. Anagrams | 9. Orthography 10. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
