Comment by ForHackernews
11 years ago
Maybe. But by that standard, using a Xerox machine is programming because you can layer some pieces of paper and transparencies together and then copy it onto an image on a single sheet.
I think to be programming, there has to be some kind "logic" (conditionals, mathematical functions, loops, etc.) embedded in the structure (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom) and I'm not sure Photoshop qualifies.
To me, the defining feature is automation. A "programmable" system is one where smaller actions can be composed into larger ones and saved for invocation later (by name, in response to some event, etc). I don't know much about photoshop, but judging from what people have said, it seems to meet this definition.
I will concede that "programming," in the sense of "I've been programming for the last couple hours" or "He isn't very good at programming" implies the use of a Turing complete language. Photoshop would probably fail here, along with more programmer-y things like writing html.
I have read elsewhere that programming is giving the computer instructions. So clicking the close button on a window or typing into a word processor is technically programming (although it is not coding). My search-fu was unable to find that though.
I don't think I would consider the arrangement of paper to be a program because it doesn't change the way the machine itself operates (though perhaps one could argue it does at the level of photons and toner molecules--or that a computer just blindly "goes through the motions" with its inputs as much as a copier does with its paper input). But inputting the number of copies, darkness, collation, etc. surely counts as programming in the familiar sense.