this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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Neither is text until you combine enough of it together, code is rather expressive, when I work on codebases I can typically tell who wrote what due to their styles and whatnot. Sometimes that makes me dread working on that part as some of those people had ideas and didn't finish them. But still, it is rather expressive. Like get two people to do the same task that lets say takes 1k lines to do, you're going to get two very different programs, where the different programmers chose to do things as different levels of abstraction, where they decided what should and shouldn't be functions, and how the programs literally read, as most programs can be read as english if you learn to ignore the syntax. And neither is necessarily better or worse than another, they're just different like is it better to use a hash map instead of an array when there's 1000 elements? Maybe, maybe not. What about all of the different data structures, or anything really. It is expressive, and a creative task, if but an atypical one.
It's just not man. Maybe bad code has a style, but good code can always be be broken down to optimized implementations if done properly, and even if, you could then say the same thing about a sufficiently developed recipe, or meal, as you can generally tell the chef that made it or diner it came from in town, etc, etc in a lot of cases. I'm not saying it can't be used to make something artistic at some level, but code itself is not deserving of copyright, and copyright itself is entirely busted anyway. The concept is unfit and untooled for modern society.
it just is man. Simple code may not have a style, but anything more complex, no, it has a style and has a lot of room for the how. Like think about it for a second, there are so many way of doing things, object oriented, functional, imperative, etc. And a programmer can mix and match those as much as they see fit. Deny it all you like, but code has a style, and is creative work. We should protect creative works.
I disagree wholeheartedly.
And you're wrong, it is a form of creative expression that has style and form.
Nah, you're wrong. Code is almost exclusively implementations with a final optimized form for a task akin to a recipe.
No, code is not, it's more akin to a written work.
That's not accurate.
It is
It is not. I can setup a automated reply if you continue to insist on.. Whatever this is, or we can agree to disagree which is fine, but I find your perspective twisted, ignorant, and incorrect. I'm not sure what you want from me beyond that other than to capitulate to your tantrum.
tantrum? Says that person who's doing this :P