So programs can affect the internal state of the computer, thus resulting in useful work being done which would otherwise not be done in the absence of said program. Which means programs do something, rather than nothing.
This is like claiming books change the world. In one sense they do, but in a a bit more real sense it’s people reading books who change the world. A crucial distinction.
Books cannot change the world if they lie unread on a shelf or are confiscated or impounded and kept out of people’s hands.
In the same way, software cannot be useful to you if your hardware will not run it.
Therefore we cannot think that by being programmers making software, we are directly helping people; we can only help those people who can, and will, run our software.
