Purposes
Source code is primarily used as input to the process that produces an executable program (i.e., it is compiled or interpreted). It is also used as a method of communicating algorithms between people (e.g., code snippets in books).
Programmers often find it helpful to review existing source code to learn about programming techniques. The sharing of source code between developers is frequently cited as a contributing factor to the maturation of their programming skills. Some people consider source code an expressive artistic medium.
Porting software to other computer platforms is usually prohibitively difficult without source code. Without the source code for a particular piece of software, portability is generally computationally expensive. Possible porting options include binary translation and emulation of the original platform.
Decompilation of an executable program can be used to generate source code, either in assembly code or in a high level language.
Programmers frequently adapt source code from one piece of software to use in other projects, a concept known as software reusability.
Read more about this topic: Source Code
Famous quotes containing the word purposes:
“Let us guard against saying that there are laws in nature. There are merely necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses. Once you understand that there are no purposes, then you also understand that nothing is accidental: for it is only in a world of purposes that the word “accident” makes sense.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“One of the baffling things about life is that the purposes of institutions may be ideal, while their administration, dependent upon the faults and weaknesses of human beings, may be bad.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Since [Rousseau’s] time, and largely thanks to him, the Ego has steadily tended to efface itself, and, for purposes of model, to become a manikin on which the toilet of education is to be draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The object of study is the garment, not the figure.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)