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We should stop thinking about software as anything other than getting the computer to do what we want it to do for us

…I agree and yet I find myself asking: what other way is there to think about software?

well, video games are an art form. in like an abstract sense you're trying to get the computer to do what you want, but in practice it's much less "shuffle these bits from A to B" and more "this code needs to induce emotion in another person" which is a very different way of making software

i think in an abstract sense you're trying to induce an emotion in another person, in a *concrete* sense you are trying to get the computer to do what you want.

when was the last time you saw a road sign that was paint on a canvas? :P more pointedly though, computers don't know how to induce emotions, that's *you* doing the thing, through the computer, with software

yeeeah, I mean, both eating and dancing are fundamentally moving atoms around, right, but thinking about those things in such fundamental terms doesn't actually help you understand either or even relate the two, unless you're like, studying neurochemistry or something.

I think understanding software actually helps you understand a lot about video games and relate them to software engineering though? to suggesting that writing a video game and writing other software are so fundamentally different as eating and dancing feels like a stretch.