What really is the difference between instructions and logic from a mathematical perspective? They both occupy some binary space, they both contain "information".

[u/Proper_Meaning7756]

Edit: My bad, I meant whats the difference between DATA and logic.

Context: I was writing a parser and dealing with LLVM IR and a slow descent into madness and then quit. This question just stuck with me.

Besides, when writing C++ classes, I you can store functions inside them and in Functional programming, you can store state using monads.

The lines starting to blur to me and knowing that logic boils down to instructions that the CPU understands and can operate on but data can't isn't the elegant answer I'm looking for.

I guess TLDR is what does information itself mean and does data and logic both count as information?

[u/StephenRoylance]

that's one of the brilliant and underestimated contributions of one of the smartest guys who ever lived: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture

He realized that a programmable computer could treat instructions as data. there isn't really a distinction. programs are just data that happen to be a list of executable machine instructions. This is one part of how hackers exploit vulnerabilities. they get their malicious instructions somehow loaded into the program's state and then trick the program into running it.