Definition

In simple words, code is a set of instructions written down using a programming language [→], meant to be processed by a computer.

Use Cases and Examples

When a programmer writes a "Hello, World!" program in the C programming language, the code looks like this:

Copy
01: #include <stdio.h>
02: int main() 
03: {
04:    printf("Hello, World!");
05:    return 0;
06: }
07: Similarly, the code for writing a "Hello, World!" program in the Java programming language looks like this:
08: class HelloWorld 
09: {
10:     public static void main(String[] args) 
11: {
12:         System.out.println("Hello, World!"); 
13:     }
14: }

This is saved in a text file-like file usually with a special extension at the end of the file, for example, our C program above can be saved as hello_word.c.

Another alternative term used for code in the programming world is source code [→]. Usually, software developers will reserve the term source code to mean a group of "code files" that make up a piece of software and use the term code to just refer to one file or a line of instruction.

Summary

Also, the act of writing software is sometimes referred to as coding.

Here is another article you might like 😊 "What Is Concatenation?"