>Fortran (really HPC) people call programs and libraries "codes".
I think it's a European engineering thing that just sort of caught on, actually. For example when I was in undergrad, my 4th-year computational fluids prof made us use "Code Aster"[0] and "Code Saturne"[1] which are both made by a French lab, I believe. Most of the usage of "code as a countable noun" that I've encountered has origins in English-as-a-second-language projects.
The uncountable aspect of many English words is highly unintuitive to many of us.
Information. Code. Software. Hardware.
I suspect many people don't even know they are uncountable.
I suppose for software we should just use programs or applications. But that's slightly more specific than software!
In French we can have both: le logiciel as some uncountable mass, or un/des/N logiciels if you need to count them.
Why the hell do I need to cut information into pieces to count it?
Both English and French are cursed languages, but English loses on this one.
And then there's the trousers. And now you need to say "a pair of" to talk about one unit of them. Though to be completely fair we have that for the glasses (lunettes) and the scissors as well.
> I suspect many people don't even know they are uncountable.
Well, most English speakers may not know the term, but they can feel the concept just fine.
> In French we can have both: le logiciel as some uncountable mass, or un/des/N logiciels if you need to count them.
This mostly works in English (and other European languages) as well, e.g. "Two teas/beers, please" etc. But in English this turn of phrase is much more restricted which is indeed a shame.
And let's not even start with pluralia tantum.
>In French we can have both: le logiciel as some uncountable mass, or un/des/N logiciels if you need to count them.
Mais est-ce qu'on dit "les codes"? Selon moi ça ne marche pas.