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From: bob@tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: source code availability
Message-ID: <BOB.89Feb2185330@tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 2 Feb 89 23:53:30 GMT
References: <17848@gatech.edu> <374@uncmed.med.unc.edu>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer & Information Science
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In-reply-to: danielg@earl.med.unc.edu's message of 2 Feb 89 16:06:01 GMT

In article <374@uncmed.med.unc.edu> danielg@earl.med.unc.edu (Daniel Gene Sinclair) writes:
   please explain in *simple* *layman's* terms what source code is for me.

If someone hands you a program that says "hello, world" you can run it
on the same type of computer that they compiled it on.  If they hand
you a tape containing a file containing

	main(){printf("helo, world\n");}

then you can compile that program on any type of machine you might
encounter with an appropriate compiler for the language.  You might be
able to learn something about programming from looking at the text of
the program.  And if the program has bugs (as it turns out this one
does) then you can fix them and recompile the program.  Then it will
work right for you, for anyone else with whom you share your fixes,
and everyone else sooner-or-later if you give your fixes back to the
person who wrote the buggy version in the first place.