I think it's both actually, and you're hitting on something I was thinking of while writing that post. I'm reading "The Perfectionists," which is about the invention of precision engineering. It had what I would consider three aspects, all of which we should care about:
1. The invention of THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE MACHINE. In our context, this is "Programming as Theory Building." Our programs represent some conception of the world that is NOT identical to the source code, much the way early precision tools embodied philosophies like interchangeability.
2. The building of the machine itself, which has to function correctly. To your point, this is one of the major things we care about, but I don't agree it's the only thing. In the code world this IS the code, to your point. When this is all we think about, though, I think you get spaghetti code bases and poorly trained developers.
3. Training apprentices in both the ideas and the craft of producing machines.
You can argue we should only care about #2, many businesses certainly incentivize thinking in that direction, but I think all 3 are important. Part of what makes coding and talking about coding tricky is that written artifacts, even the same written artifacts, express all 3 of these things and so matters get very easily confused.
1. The invention of THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE MACHINE. In our context, this is "Programming as Theory Building." Our programs represent some conception of the world that is NOT identical to the source code, much the way early precision tools embodied philosophies like interchangeability.
2. The building of the machine itself, which has to function correctly. To your point, this is one of the major things we care about, but I don't agree it's the only thing. In the code world this IS the code, to your point. When this is all we think about, though, I think you get spaghetti code bases and poorly trained developers.
3. Training apprentices in both the ideas and the craft of producing machines.
You can argue we should only care about #2, many businesses certainly incentivize thinking in that direction, but I think all 3 are important. Part of what makes coding and talking about coding tricky is that written artifacts, even the same written artifacts, express all 3 of these things and so matters get very easily confused.