Hard Code Vs. Soft Code

Neither term had a single inventor — both emerged organically from programming practice. Hard-coded is attested from 1972, documented by the Oxford English Dictionary, and derived from the older metaphor of "hard-wired" circuits that could not be reconfigured after manufacture. As high-level programming languages displaced assembly code through the 1960s and 1970s, distinguishing fixed literal values from configurable ones became a central design concern, and soft-coded evolved as its natural counterpart.