When I first used Linux, in the previous millennium, I remember being confused that it called executables ‘binaries’. I’m pretty sure everything on my disk was stored in binary (these days it’s probably base 4 or something, but it at least exposes binary at the interface).

It remains a stupid name. Please can we call executables executables? Shared libraries are also binaries. PDFs are also binaries. Text files are binaries (yes, ASCII is just a set of bytes mapping to characters, it’s not some magic non-binary format). Everything on your computer is binary (unless you have a quantum computer or some weird trinary-logic system, yes, I know you people, you don’t need to comment).