This post is a follow-up to my recent post programs are made of ideas. I received a lot of interesting comments and criticism on this philosophical exposition. But there is one in particular that caused me to deeply consider whether my argument made sense. It starts with this excerpt from the post: Why constrain ourselves [...]

quietfanatic – The fundamental unit of a computer program is not a function; it’s an action. CPUs don’t do lambda calculus; they follow procedures. I saw this on twitter a couple days ago and responded with a jerk of my knee, only to commence a discussion1 in which I failed to accurately express my objection. [...]