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Talk:Why software is different

Revision as of 02:41, 24 October 2010 by Jose X (talk | contribs) (forgot to add timestamp/sig to comment on how "Software is unlike applied science" is a strong point)

Known and unknown components

There's been an idea rattling in the back of my mind that software is different because the computer (instructions and storage) are known before the invention exists. Any combination of these instructions and data sets would be obvious to a person skilled in the art, say, a computer programmer, when faced with the problem to be solved by the alleged computer-related invention. Therefore any computer program isn't unpatentable by virtue of exclusion, but by virtue of lacking an inventive step.

Why this is different to physics, biology, engineering or chemistry will depend on the field. Engineers need to build mechanical parts, as do physicists. Chemists rely on reaction probabilities and have a huge degree of uncertainty as to whether the reagents do what they say, as also is the case with biological inventions. There's the Heisenberg Limit to these kinds of invention which simply does not exist when a set of known instructions manipulate a set of known data. That's how software is different.

hmm. I'm not sure. Wouldn't that be like saying that because we know all the words in advance, we can't find novels or manuals interesting/innovative? Ciaran 06:45, 5 May 2009 (EDT)
It seems this example is now covered in "Software is unlike applied science". I think this is a much stronger point than most others on the page. In fact, a person hitting the point in mathematics near the very top with how it is written now and who has heard the counterargument that an "application of mathematics" is fine may skip the rest of the page thinking these are just tired old arguments and never get down to the bottom to see "Software is unlike applied science", which is a point that actually captures what is important about software being mathematics or really like any other intellectual pursuit untied to the physical processes. We note that software is written for an "abstract machine" that is implementable with real circuits only because of the wide bounds possible in physical tolerances thanks to the approach called digitalization -- without digitalization (ie, we can "write" it), software would not be so purely mental void of physical constraints. In this very important way software is in step with fiction writing rather than with the practice of science. It hints to why writing software is so low cost (low risk) and hence why so many can participate, leading to significant degrees of abridgment in society and stifling of progress is we introduce broad monopolies. Jose X 02:41, 24 October 2010 (EDT)