Code Is Intermediary

The claim is that code sits between language and the machine. It does, and more literally than the phrase suggests: compilers have a stage actually named the intermediate representation. But 'intermediary to language' implies code is not language, and it is — programming languages sit inside the Chomsky hierarchy with the rest. The real difference is ambiguity: natural language tolerates it, code cannot. And Naur's 1985 argument gives the sharp consequence — the program is not its source, the theory lives in people, and the text compresses and omits. Code carries the instruction faithfully and the intent badly.