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From: daniel.elia...@excite.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: GUI library/toolkit recommendation
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> A computer program is real to the extent that anything else that you call
> "real" is real.
>=20
> It can be pinpointed in space, and given enough effort, as precisely as w=
e
> like. For instance, the program's image can reside on a very specific are=
a of
> disk, and while running, its code and data, at any instant, is in specifi=
c
> places on specific processor and memory chips.
>=20
> It has mass, volume, temperature.
>=20
> Would you say that a deck of punched cards driving a silk-weaving loom in=
to
> weaving a picture is not real? If that is real, why is an electronic comp=
uter
> program not real?

Of course the "program" is not the media - it is the sequential code - it i=
s more ephemeral, for instance I consider that it is like a poem.

Is a poem real if it is written down?  You can point the paper and ink.  Is=
 a poem real if it is not written down?  Of course - but now it is like an =
idea.  Ideas are real even if not written down and not told to anyone other=
 than the original thinker-upper.

But of course the idea/poem/program is at least represented in the brain - =
and presumably the representation occupies media there.

What about an idea/poem/program that has not been developed by any thinking=
 being yet?  Can it still exist?  Can a specific sequence of integers exist=
 even though no one has "thought it up" yet?

And if so, are any bits of energy in the universe devoted to it?

Well, I'm off-topic; we were discussing computer programs that certainly ha=
ve already been thought up by people and even transferred to various media =
outside of their bodies.