Your comments on the importance of perspective are warranted. Perhaps I should have emphasized more that how those bits are interpreted is key.

And your observation as to how bits are stored is important too. Perspective goes all the way down! I love the idea of information being stored by holes - absence of electrons. A very Sherlock Holmes idea, “The dog did not bark at night”. Or like the bit about the wagon wheel and clay pitcher being useful because of the hole in the middle (from a work long before Holmes and on the other side of the world).

For instance, there is a convention that is agreed upon by both parties. There is also a shared culture and learning. There is a common viewpoint or agreement on at least some of the (sometimes extreme) basic assumptions underlying the world view.

In the same manner, the program is more than just the 1s and 0s. You do allude to that in that you state it is a matter of perspective, but the perspective is the central key point and not just a sideboard to the entree. That perspective is not just intent - how you wish to use the ones and zeroes - but is also in how they are interpreted, by what they are interpreted, etc.

It is, perhaps, more correct to say that computer languages are exactly that - an expressive language for communication. It is extremely precise and detailed but it is still communication. How it is represented in the computer (as ones and zeroes) is no more important to the central concept than how it is represented in your brain (as electro-chemical changes in neurons). And, truthfully, it is NOT stored as ones and zeroes in a computer. That is still an interpretation on our part. It is stored either as magnetic state changes (on disks, etc.), reflectivity state changes (on CDs), or other electrical phenomena (in the various memories, caches, etc. of the RAM, ROM, CPU, Peripherals, etc. - I admit I get a little fuzzy on the “holes” idea of solid state transistors).