unless you consider every single piece of software or code ever to be just "a way of giving instructions to computers"

Yes. Yes I do. That's exactly what code is: instructions. That's literally how computers work. That's what people like me (software developers) do when we write software: We're writing down instructions.

When you click or move your mouse, you're giving the computer instructions (well, the driver is). When you type a key, that's resulting in an instruction being executed (dozens to thousands, actually).

When I click "submit" on this comment, I'm giving a whole bunch of computers some instructions.

Insert meme of, "you mean computers are just running instructions?" "Always have been."