I hear a couple of people using the term 'programming' rather than configuring, for example:
Have you already programmed Apache's Virtual Hosts configuration correctly, with ServerName named FOO?
Program your .vimrc first before starting Vim the first time.
The last is a word-by-word citation from my teacher, but I didn't dare to correct him. Is it OK to use 'programming' instead of 'configuring'?
IMHO this sounds very ugly.
Well.. ordinary people "program" their VCR, Tivo etc. So for ordinary people program == configure. Note that even programmers don't say "program the javascript". Instead people use words like "develop" or "write" for writing programs in the programming sense.
I'd say that these are incorrect usages of the term 'programming' - as you say this is simply configuration/setup.
I generally tend to prefer the terms 'coding' and the verb 'to code' rather than programming. It's just that bit less fuzzy and has fewer alternative meanings.
Configuration is just a form of (usually declarative rather than procedural) scripting,, i.e., programming against an API.
In most cases, what we call configuration is not sophisticated enough be worthy of the name "scripting" or "programming", but some systems based on Ruby, Python, or Lisp -- e.g., EMACS -- use the programming language as a configuration language, and then configuration really does blend into programming.
A definition I like for programming is:
creating a sequence of instructions to enable the computer to do something
So, if you configure anything you are indirectly creating a sequence of instructions. Which IMHO would "qualify" configuring as an indirect type of programming.
EDIT: Also, computer development is far more than computer programming. To develop you need much more than only write instruction, you also need
If I'd tell you what kind of things I've heard... For example, during a network security class, we had to generate SSH certificates, and one girl said that the tool that generated the keys "wasn't compiling" (of course it was already compiled and installed, she just had to use it to generate the certificates!... but I suspect that for her, anything that was to be done in the console was "to compile").
So in brief, people will always speak and write badly, just don't follow them.
I completely agree with slebetman, but I'll also add that there might be some age and/or regional issues here.
As a military brat, having lived in the US south, and now working with a bunch of europeans, I frequently run into words used in different ways that I expected. Some of it might be slang to us, but it's completely normal to the person using it, and frequently, when I look up the words in a dictionary, you'll find an alternate definition that makes perfect sense.
In this particular case, from dictionary.com, the last verb definition for 'program' is :
to set, regulate, or modify so as to produce a specific response
or reaction: Program your eating habits to eliminate sweets.
Other times, I'll find that more recent generations have taken words and used them in more limited ways, but the term has a more general meaning. (casket comes to mind, which originally just meant 'small box', but now has death connotations)
In a sense, configuration is programming. It is a set of instructions for a computing device that has a very limited language - the set of allowable values for the parameters of the device/software.
One could view the apache server, for example, as a language interpreter, and the parameter values as the source code for that interpreter.
However, the devices are not Turing-equivalent in general (exceptions are things like emacs, where definitely it is) and I would personally reserve "programming" for cases where the language is Turing-equivalent.