Interesting, because with that view, an .STP file or anything else representing a geometry drived from a CAD drawing (DXF, DWG, SolidWorks, CATIA, etc.) is also all about instructing a computer 
the binary itself is actually dead without a team that knows how to maintain it, and if that’s lost (for example because you fired everyone or they quit - or I’ll add - generated it with AI), the effort has to be spent to understand the design all over again if you want to be able to change it.
Here’s a real-life story: a company I used to work for had launched a very successful tool more than 30 years prior. It established a new product category. I won’t reveal what it is to adhere to my NDA, even though it has long-since lapsed.
Over the decades, people had been promoted to other roles / other Business Units, product managers had long moved on, others across functions had left. The original set of people who had achieved a rich, nuanced understanding of all the decisions that had gone into going from the original ex-nihilo idea to a product that soon started getting copied by the competition, had been scattered to the four winds.
A friend was in charge of the product development project to develop a successor to that model, that had since undergone “facelifts” and minor upgrades, as the understanding of how this thing actually works had dwindled. She found out that the company had gotten rid of “old files in drawers”, and that included all the documentation around the project that defined the market opportunity, the project(s) that documented the development of the technologies and components the successful product utilized, the project that developed the product, etc. Drawings were available, obviously, as the widget kept coming off the production line.
But the knowledge had long been lost. They had to do a lot of reverse engineering and “theory-building” to get up to speed with the state of knowledge from decades prior. This is rework that could have been avoided if not for some “neat freaks” who didn’t understand the opportunity cost of throwing out old binders or wiping computer folders full of knowledge…
So, the “binary” (the product), as well as the drawings behind it (incl. specifications for parts production and instructions for assembly, maintenance and repair), were also “dead”, as they didn’t incorporate the “why” behind why this screws into that, why it should survive a drop from up to x centimeters height above ground, why something is like this instead of like that, etc.
…so: how is it different to software?
the binary is the instructions (to the computer). The code is the design.
The code is the fruit of the design, and obviously incorporates design decisions along the way. Therefore, the code is the implementation of the design, and the computer is the “machine operator” / CNC that turns the instructions into the widget (binary).
programming as theory-building
I agree; and engineering and figuring out trade-offs is also theory-building. A fancy way of saying “closing the knowledge gaps”, which is a Lean Product Development consultant’s/expert’s way of saying the much more pedestrian “don’t make uninformed, risky decisions”.
for software, the instructions (to the computer) are the end goal.
It depends on how small or large the scope of the system you’re looking at is. For the subsystem of a business we call a team or department of developers, yeah, the instructions are the output, the end goal. For the larger subsystem called “product development” (department, team, process, however you organize things), the instructions are merely a vehicle to achieving some other end goal of that subsystem, that contributes towards end goals of the larger context etc. etc. which at some points ends with the “fruit” of the overarching system achieving something. That something might be “sustainable revenues”, “gaining market share”, “people find my Hex.pm packages useful”, etc.
So perhaps we’ve debating two different things here: product development vs. coding. The former encapsulates the latter as an activity.
We have a turing-complete computer that can do anything, and infinite ways to instruct it to do something.
To some extent, humans do that to, but are subject to boredom, whims, other interests, not liking the management style, etc. 
