LessWrong is a deeply strange place and you have to be careful with it, but the sequence on maps and territories is a pretty good introduction: https://www.lesswrong.com/w/map-and-territory
No. In interpreted languages that is kinda true, in compiled languages that is definitely false.
The code is a simplification. It has a direct relationship to what actually happens, yes, but most often glosses over the details (even in C and other very low level languages)
Not so. The code may be the same, but the code is the map, not the territory. The code is not enough to understand the territory, even with mock data, c.f.
Our staging environment contains data that matches Production as closely as possible, but was not sufficient in this case and the mock data we relied on to simulate what would occur was insufficient.
Example?
PHYSICAL WORLD
The thing : [A rock]
The map artifact : rock. Size, location, chemical composition.
SOFTWARE
The thing : x=1;
The map artifact : x=1;
I’m not sure they are the same thing. And maybe there are layers to this. A code base can be a representation, a map, of some real-world thing. A physics engine in a game maps to real-world physics. A robotics control program maps to a set of movements that accomplish a task. But there is another layer that I think is more what the saying is about. As a software developer you have a mental map of your software. You have some understanding of how it works to accomplish its goal. And your mental map, your understanding, may be complete and correct and it may not be. This is one of the most common sources of defects in code. I think my code is working this way, but actually it’s working that way, so when it runs it does something I don’t expect.
The code is the map, but the territory would be the abstractions we use of the real world (and ideas). We only use what we need and is what we put in the code, it’s useless make an abstraction 1:1. Just read about the topic, so I’m still digesting some things.
So for one thing, there’s no translation loss. That’s a big deal.
