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"Code is a by-product", remind me to Atwood's Please don't Learn to code.

Code is a by-product of software development in the same sense as a blueprint is a by-product of engineering. Teaching a programming language doesn't turn someone into a software developer just as teaching technical drawing doesn't turn someone into an engineer.

I think you're being a bit free with the metaphors here.

A blueprint isn't a finished deliverable if you want something that you can actually use. Code, on the other hand, mixes design and building - if you delete the code, what are you left with?

Yeah, I'm playing with metaphors here. The point I want to get across is the code itself is just a means to an end. Just the code is often not a deliverable, unless you make money from software patents. Google doesn't make money because they sell a lot of code. Facebook doesn't get investment because they wrote a lot of code. That doesn't mean their code isn't valuable - it is. But it's the actual computation (e.g. execution of this codebase) that has real value. Get it?

That attitude leads to devaluing software, followed by bugs, a legacy codebase and not being able to extend your software when your competitors catch up. Programs and the problems that they solve are intertwined. You can't easily separate them - which is why your metaphor doesn't work.

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