> where it comes to software, the execution is the idea.
I strongly disagree with that. Although ideas and execution (i.e. software) are both "nothing more" than information, they don't have much in common. Also, ideas are refined as well as changed during execution - that is, our perception of the big picture changes as we get more information about the details.
> Give two programmers the same "idea", and you'll end up with two different products
I fully agree with that. BTW, this somewhat contradicts the first statement.
>Give two programmers the same "idea", and you'll end up with two different products
Do you or the parent have a citation?
I used to work in patents, the number of independent recurrences of the same idea in a particular field is often pretty high. All truck drivers appear to think of digital number plates for example.
Exact details may differ but I'd expect the majority of programmers to come up with a lot of crossover if implementing a well-defined idea.
It depends on what you mean by idea of course - is it "we'll make a game" or is it "we'll introduce digital scoring to board games" or "we'll allow bartering in our MMORPG".
> where it comes to software, the execution is the idea.
I think that is nearly true from the customer's perspective. They (most likely) don't have any information about the idea and only know what they interact with in the form of the execution.
I strongly disagree with that. Although ideas and execution (i.e. software) are both "nothing more" than information, they don't have much in common. Also, ideas are refined as well as changed during execution - that is, our perception of the big picture changes as we get more information about the details.
> Give two programmers the same "idea", and you'll end up with two different products
I fully agree with that. BTW, this somewhat contradicts the first statement.