code or coding

The act of creating computer programs, Web sites, and other applications. "Code" refers to the typed program instructions that programmers write. The written code is interpreted into a language that a system can read and execute. A favorite term among Web developers, code is often mentioned with interesting verbs. For example, you may hear programmers say, "We're busy slinging code," which means they are writing a computer program or programming a database or Web site.

Historical perspective: A cave in the Arctic holds the world’s most important software codes, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, the last stop for civilization before the North Pole, is known as the Doomsday Vault because it stores seeds for the world’s most important crops in case of an apocalyptic famine or war. But nearby, Nat Friedman, the CEO of GitHub, is on a mission to preserve several terabytes of code, including source code for the Linux and Android operating systems. It’s kept on what look like old-school movie reels and can last 2,000 years in a cold, dry, low-oxygen cave. The reels are stored in the Arctic World Archive, a repository of some of the world’s irreplaceable records, including Vatican archives, masterpieces of Italian cinema, and the recipe for a certain burger chain’s special sauce.