Is the phrase "source code" intrinsically plural?

Question

If we're talking about the phrase "source code", isn't that naturally and implicitly plural?

Consider the following sentence:

All of the source code for this project is in a public GitHub repository and licensed as MIT.

Is it:

A. "source code"
or
B. "source codes"

I posted this on Twitter, and I'm truly curious which one is correct here and why?

Answer 1

It is very definitely "source code".

There are many uncountable nouns you will encounter in computing. However as non-native speakers contribute increasingly to the literature, it's increasingly common to encounter various terms that are pluralised incorrectly, for example:

middlewares: this seems to becoming increasingly accepted, presumably because often it is necessary to refer to multiple layers of middleware, and there is no convenient concise term for this, for reference, wiktionary lists middleware as 'usually uncountable' and in the footer is listed in the categories for both 'countable nouns' and 'uncountable nouns.

Similarly malwares, softwares (wiktionary states that this as usually an error made by non-native speakers) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/softwares

etc.

codes (e.g. 'your codes are buggy') seems to be generally less accepted, but there are lots of examples of usage in the wild, for instance there are countless examples in published papers if you search scholar.google.com: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=codes+github&btnG=

Answer 2

It is A. Perhaps it’s because the term code refers to the collection of all the instructions that make up a program. It could be one instruction, one line of instructions, or 150,000 files each with thousands of lines of instructions. As a professional programmer for about thirty years now, I’ve never heard a colleague use “source codes”, or ever read that in any industry publications. As a side note, you can refer to source code as “the source”, but I never really hear “the sources”.

Answer 3

The use of code in this context is consistent with and derives from its wider use.

Cambridge

set of rules that are accepted as general principles, or a set of written rules that say how people in a particular organization or country should behave:
Clinics will be subject to a new code of conduct and stronger controls by local authorities.

a set of principles that are accepted and used by society or a particular group of people:
a moral code
a code of behaviour/ethics

COMPUTING specialized:
a language used to program (= give instructions to) computers:
The children are learning to write code
The problem was fixed with about 150 lines of computer code.

In all these cases the code is a set of something (principles, rules, instructions …). The contents of the set or code may be plural, but it is singular.

Answer 4

No source-code IS NOT intrinsically plural, but there is NO plural form of this noun. It is known as Mass or Uncountable noun. In many cases if you intended to use a plural, then the simpler term code or sometimes source is used if a programming context is implicit.

The general reason that this is a mass noun is that it is hard to classify even potential boundaries of discrete individual units of source-code, the results would be highly subjective to the given context, so much so that it doesn't make sense to even try to define what a single unit might be, when we need to define boundaries there are specific terms to use that represent the type of boundary. There are many other computing terms that fall into this category.

There are some contexts when the subject is deliberately meant to refer to multiple unrelated repositories of source code, to add emphasis to the individuality of the separate repositories you might be tempted to use the term source codes as a form of collective noun in this context but it would be incorrect and there are other terms for identifying the individual elements, in this case repository or project are acceptable and they greatly reduce the ambiguity of the statement. Consider the following examples

• (wrong) "I searched all of the source codes in GitHub."
• (good) "I searched all of the repositories in GitHub"
• (OK) "I searched all of the projects in GitHub"

Whilst comprehendible, the first example should be avoided because in this context it is still ambiguous if the subject is the source code of the GitHub platform itself, or the code that is stored within it.

I agree with the technical definitions offered by these well cited answers: @Mark-Allen and @Anton but we should acknowledge that it is still common to see the pluralisation form of these computing terms in non-technical contexts.

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The origins of the incorrect plural form might be related to non-native english speakers as defined here:

Similarly malwares, softwares (wiktionary states that this as usually an error made by non-native speakers) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/softwares

But that doesn't explain on its own the general motivation or intention when used by authors who should otherwise know better.

There is a Hipster subculture in software development* that exists outside of technical documentation, where it is cool or in vogue to deliberately misspell these common uncountable computing nouns by appending an s to indicate a facetious or sarcastic undertone to the statement.

As the community of developers predominantly uses text based communication for both professional and social interactions they have organically evolved separate rich vocabulary for colloquial or informal conversations as well as some more specific nomenclature for slang terms to help convey tone and intent without having to specify specific emotions and feelings in plain text, similar to how emojis are used today by everyone else.

• This form of mockery is a derivative form of leetspeak and generally represents the author as someone who thinks off themselves as a subject matter expert or perhaps 133t, who is deliberately impersonating the stereotype of a noob or someone who otherwise does not yet understand or take seriously the technical domain of programming or hacking.

*I don't want to offend the purists by claiming that this culture has permeated all facets of Software Engineering, even though it has

To enhance the effect, one can substitute the s with a z or in an extreme case if you wanted to appear especially arrogant you might double the s.

• Due to the double nature of the statement being facetious or sarcastic if the tone is not clear then look for further devices like emoji to add clarity.

I like this example usage from this page that is itself a reference to other common posts where the user 'want the codez', it's not the Queen's English and a technical document or thesis is not likely to be afforded much respect if it uses this language, but it is part of the vernacular for this domain.

You would pull if you want the histories merged, you’d fetch if you just ‘want the codez’ as some person has been tagging some articles around here.

• "want the codez" used in comments on a technical forum will specifically indicate that the poster is not interested in background theory or discussions, they have assumed the persona of a noob, but in this case one who is not interested in evolving their understanding of the topic and as such are likely to recieve a low quality response.