51
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Sucuk@kbin.social to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

I don't know (but wanna learn) programming, but, for example, can't you inspect the code of an app if it's installed?

(yeah this is kind of a stupid question.)

EDIT: Thanks for the clarification, guys!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago

Kinda. What you're referring to is "decompilation", which is the process of taking the output of a compiler and trying to reverse-engineer the code that produced it. But decompiled code is really hard to read and modify, because it isn't what humans wrote, it's what the compiler translated it into, and that can have some unexpected changes than are mostly irreversible. And, since it's closed source, if you somehow manage to make a change, you can't re-release it -- you don't have the license to do so.

With open source, you see the same code as the maintainers, so it has the high-level programming concepts and good variable names, and you have permissions to fork and release your own version.

[-] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

The other thing is that on modern platforms, decomplied code can and will be ludicrously complex and probably rely on several levels' worth of abstraction layers, external libraries, API's, and sandboxes provided by the OS or whatever other platform it's meant to run on. Outside of microcontrollers and some embedded applications, the days are long gone where you just have relatively simple machine code running directly on the bare metal of the computer's processor and unprotected memory.

[-] CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

This is a very good addition!

[-] PenguinJuice@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Assembly is a difficult beast

this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
51 points (76.8% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35212 readers
1491 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS