Is programming an emulation of the real world? Assume that we have a car in the real world, this car would be composed of atoms, and we can do operations on this car (for example: we can move the car or change its color, etc.).
And assume that we have a car object in the computer world (in RAM), this car object obviously is not a real car but rather a representation of a real car, but we can imagine that this car object is a real car, and we can also do operations on this car object (for example: we can move the car object or change its color, etc.).
Now if we want to for example change the color of the car in the real world, we have to manipulate some of the atoms that compose the car to accomplish that.
And to change the color of the car object in the computer world (in RAM), we have to manipulate some of the bits that compose the car object to accomplish that.
However, one difference that I can think of between the real world and the computer world is that in the real world the car is visible to people, however in the computer world the car object is not visible to people (you have to paint the car object on the screen to make it visible to people).
So can we think of programming as an emulation of the real world? more specifically, can we think of the real world as &quot;real world RAM&quot; that can contain any object (these objects would be composed of atoms) in the same way that RAM can contain any object (these objects would be composed of bits)?
This is a third true, a third false, and a third unknown.
Why you might think its true
As you have stated, it does intuitively makes sense that any kind of &quot;computation&quot; or &quot;effect&quot; in the real world has an equivalent computation in the computer. After all - the world we know is compromised of atoms and such, and it makes sense we can store such data in bits. If im not mistaken, the Church-Turing hypothesis that was based on this intuition hypothesizes that anything that can be done in the real world can be done in a computer
Why we might think its false
Think about our world - it has a lot of people, which independently and simultaneously do things. This kind of behaviour is not really natural for a computer - a computer can only process one thing (or at most a handful of things, if it has a few cores) at once. This leads us to think it might be impossible to think of the world as a giant computer.
Why we still don't know, and will probably never know
Physics is a branch of science that always develops. There is always more to uncover about our universe and its underlying mechanisms. Therefore, there will always be a way to create a newer and mpre sophisticated computer that can do more things. For example, the recent developments for quantum computers might change things up: In a quantum computer there are things that can be computed faster than in a normal computer. In fact, a quantum computer is capable of doing something similar to parallel computing (a common misconception is that it does compute in a parallel way, but actually it does something else that creates this effect).
This means that both statements for why it could be true and why it could be correct! It might be true that normal computers can't emulate all of the stuff that can be done in the real world, but don't know whether it will still hold for a newer computer based off of a brand new idea in physics that would be developed in a few hundred years from now.
Still, this is only my own opinion. If you want more (and probably better) answers, you might want to consider asking this to philosophers.