What is program ?

The terms computer program, software program, or just program are used to refer to either an executable program (by both lay people and computer programmers) or the collection of source code from which an executable program is created (eg, compiled).
Programs may be executed directly by hardware (e.g., a CPU); such programs consist of a sequence of instructions. Programs may also be executed by software (e.g., a scripting language may be said to be executed by an interpreter); such programs may consist of a sequence of instructions or may have a declarative form where the software provides the how information.
Computer programs are often written by people known as computer programmers, but may also be generated by other programs.


Computer programming is the iterative process of writing or editing source code. Editing source code involves testing, analyzing, and refining. A person who practices this skill is referred to as a computer programmer or software developer. The sometimes lengthy process of computer programming is usually referred to as software development. The term software engineering is becoming popular as the process is seen as an engineering discipline.

[edit] Language paradigm categories
Computer programs can be categorized by the programming language paradigms used to produce them. Two of the main paradigms are: imperative and declarative.
Programs written using an imperative language specify an algorithm using declarations, expressions, and statements. [1] Programs written using a declarative language the specify the properties that have to be met by the output and do not specify any implementation details. Two broad categories of declarative languages are functional languages and logical languages.
The form in which a program is created may be textual or visual. In a visual language program elements are graphically manipulated rather than textually specified.

[edit] Compilation or interpretation of programming languages
A computer program in the form of a human-readable, computer programming language is called source code. Source code may be converted into an executable image by a compiler or executed immediately with the aid of an interpreter. Compiled computer programs are commonly referred to as executables, binary images, or simply as binaries — a reference to the binary file format used to store the executable code.

[edit] Self-modifying computer programs
A computer program in execution is normally treated as being different from the data the program operates on. However, in some cases this distinction is blurred when a computer program modifies itself. The modified computer program is subsequently executed as part of the same program. Self-modifying code is possible for programs written in Lisp, COBOL, and Prolog.

hey, do you mean "computer program"?

A computer program is one or more instructions that are intended for execution by a computer.