Information and computation have transformed the way we look at the world beyond statistical correlations, the way we can perform experiments, through simulations, and the way we can test these hypotheses. In previous work we introduced a concept of "algorithmicity" and of "programmability". Biology has already taken steps towards becoming a computer science aiming at reprogramming nature after the realisation that nature herself has reprogrammed organisms by harnessing the power of natural selection. We further unpack these ideas related to computability, algorithmic information theory and software engineering, in the context of the extent to which biology can be (re)programmed, and with how we may go about doing so in a more systematic way with all the tools and concepts offered by theoretical computer science in an translation exercise from computing to molecular biology and back. These concepts provide a means to a hierarchical organization thereby blurring previously clear-cut lines between concepts like matter and life, or between tumour types that are otherwise taken as different and may not have however a different cause. This does not diminish the properties of life or make its components and functions less interesting. On the contrary, this approach makes for a more encompassing and integrated view of nature, one that subsumes observer and observed within the same system, and can generate new perspectives and tools with which to view complex diseases like cancer, approaching them afresh from a software-engineering viewpoint that casts evolution in the role of programmer, cells as computer programs, the immune system as a program debugging tool, and diseases as a battlefield where these forces deploy.
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