Is the phrase “source code” intrinsically plural?

irregular-pluralsnounsphrase-usagepluralia-tantumuncountable-nouns

If we're talking about the phrase "source code", isn't that naturally and implicitly plural?

Consider the following sentence:

All of the source code for this project is in a public GitHub repository and licensed as MIT.

Is it:

A. "source code"

or
B. "source codes"

I posted this on Twitter, and I'm truly curious which one is correct here and why?

Best Answer

It is very definitely "source code".

There are many uncountable nouns you will encounter in computing. However as non-native speakers contribute increasingly to the literature, it's increasingly common to encounter various terms that are pluralised incorrectly, for example:

middlewares: this seems to becoming increasingly accepted, presumably because often it is necessary to refer to multiple layers of middleware, and there is no convenient concise term for this, for reference, wiktionary lists middleware as 'usually uncountable' and in the footer is listed in the categories for both 'countable nouns' and 'uncountable nouns.

Similarly malwares, softwares (wiktionary states that this as usually an error made by non-native speakers) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/softwares

etc.

codes (e.g. 'your codes are buggy') seems to be generally less accepted, but there are lots of examples of usage in the wild, for instance there are countless examples in published papers if you search scholar.google.com: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=codes+github&btnG=

Related Topic