X-Received: by 10.66.72.131 with SMTP id d3mr4321931pav.38.1356548395179; Wed, 26 Dec 2012 10:59:55 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.50.13.130 with SMTP id h2mr7515523igc.16.1356548394950; Wed, 26 Dec 2012 10:59:54 -0800 (PST) Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!f6no4102114pbd.1!news-out.google.com!6ni65509pbd.1!nntp.google.com!kr7no14050478pbb.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.programming.threads Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2012 10:59:54 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=4.53.176.18; posting-account=2ArgKwoAAADj4W_tx564aIpoV_ojs3gQ NNTP-Posting-Host: 4.53.176.18 References: <9gIZi.6511$Ew3.5251@newsfe7-gui.ntli.net> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <015457d5-3721-4e31-b0ff-da7d32a0ba1f@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: How do I look inside an .exe file to view the programming From: jbonejones@gmail.com Cc: jgd@cix.co.uk Injection-Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2012 18:59:55 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Xref: csiph.com comp.programming.threads:1272 Very well put John Dallman...nice. ~Jason On Sunday, November 11, 2007 1:17:00 PM UTC-7, John Dallman wrote: > In article <9gIZi.6511$Ew3.5251@newsfe7-gui.ntli.net>, > corbyguy@ntlworld.com (corbyguy) wrote: > > > I have downloaded an .exe program file and I would like to look > > inside this .exe program file to have a look at, view and read the > > details of the program. > > > > Does anyone know of a program that I can use to open up this .exe > > file so I can view and read the written program? > > That's a question pretty much equivalent to asking "Where in my car are > the full plans and building specifications hidden?" There are ways of > programming where the "program" that you run is the "source code", the > text that the programmer writes. But pretty well none of those produce > .exe files. > > Most .exe files are written in programming languages that are > "compiled". This term has a special meaning for computer people: it > means translating the program from the form that a human can read and > write into a form whereby the computer's processor can run it. This is > not, in general, a reversible process. Many kinds of information that > humans find important or vital in working with a program's source code > are discarded in the process of compilation. This includes all the names > for parts of the program and for items of data within it, all the > explanatory text, and many more things not easily described. > > Further, you are in quite the wrong place to be asking this question. To > continue with the car analogy, you have done the equivalent of walking > into a meeting of metallurgists - people who develop metal alloys, not > cars - and asking them about your car, without knowing what make or > model your car is. Nobody is blaming you for this because your naivety > is pretty obvious, but you aren't likely to get the kind of help you > need. > > Do you have any experience of computer programming at all? You would > need that to make sense of the source code of any program. If not, you > may wish to learn it, but it is not something that you can pick up in a > few newsgroup postings. It's about as complex, and boring as chartered > accountancy, but much more subdivided. For example, you would expect any > accountant to be able to make some sense of the books of any company. > This is not true with programmers: if accountants were divided into > fifty or so different schools, of widely varying size, that did the > books for different kinds of companies in utterly incompatible ways, > disagreeing over the meanings of terms such as "profit" and "income", > they'd be much more like programmers. > > If you want to learn programming, expect to spend money on books about > it, programs for doing it, and some basic training courses. Expect it to > take time: months for basic proficiency, years to get good at it. > > -- > John Dallman, jgd@cix.co.uk, HTML mail is treated as probable spam.