VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds

Posted Jul 3, 2009 19:03 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
In reply to: VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds by jordanb
Parent article: VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds

Code is a set of instructions performed by a machine.

That's a bad way of thinking about code. It's an accurate description of machine code, but since the work of Grace Hopper, good code is a description of the solution to a computational problem. It's written in a language simple enough that a computer can understand the solution and implement it. So calling code instructions to a computer is like calling a manuscript instructions to a publisher.

So the way I would compare law to code is that law is what code would be like if we had much more advanced computer technology (and I do think we'll get there eventually). Imagine code that technically says to iterate forever, but the computer understands you didn't really want an infinite loop and stops after a reasonable number of iterations. Law can do that.