When you buy software, the source code usually is not made public, but doesn’t your computer still have to run the code to use the software? How can it run the code without allowing the user to see the code?

Question

When you buy software, the source code usually is not made public, but doesn’t your computer still have to run the code to use the software? How can it run the code without allowing the user to see the code?

In: Technology

Answer 1

The computer doesn’t run the software directly from the source code. At least not with most programming languages.

With something like C++ the source code is “compiled”. Which means it gets converted into machine code, which is what the computer can actually execute.

This is a one way process. Lots of contextual information is thrown out, so it’s impossible to convert it back into the source code. It’s theoretically possible to convert it back into valid source code, but it wouldn’t be the same as the actual original code and it would be very difficult to make sense of.