Indeed, in a way the author is saying that the meaning is independent of the text; which, in literary circles, was once hotly debated. I land on the textual sid

Indeed, in a way the author is saying that the meaning is independent of the text; which, in literary circles, was once hotly debated. I land on the textual side of the line; the medium is as important to the meaning as the abstract concepts that might be components of it. Multiple tellings of the same story carry different meaning, sometimes subtly, when they are each one of oral, text, photo, painting, or film. I believe the same is true of programming. A solution in C is fundamentally distinct from a solution in ladder logic, or Haskell; even if they solve the same problem.