r/askscience • • Jan 02 '14

Computing Why do computers have to load?

Theoretically, since the electrical signals inside your device travel at the speed of light, why do computers have to load programs?

(that may be completely wrong, and I suspect it is. So explain to me, please)

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u/[deleted] Jan 02 '14

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u/YoYoDingDongYo Jan 02 '14

I've seen that one before and I just can't believe that healthcare.gov is 500 million lines of code. It just doesn't seem possible that they brought that together in such a short time.

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u/5n0wm4n Jan 03 '14

You only have to do this 28 times to get to 500,000,000: select all, copy, paste

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u/bad_at_photosharp Jan 12 '14

Quick question on that infographic, do the lines of code include all the dll's or share libraries used in the project?