[Senator Bedfellow]

If you have to build everything from scratch, it would take trillions of bytes.

Depends on how far back you want to go to consider it "from scratch" :)

In any case, the suggestion that DNA does not have enough "information" to make a human being is silly on its face - a single set of chromosomes building a human being happens daily, and culminates every time a woman gives birth. Unless, that is, we want to posit the existence of uterine elves or fallopian angels, or some other invisible entity that sets out to build a baby.

A great number of things in the human body are essentially self-organizing according to the 'rules' set up by DNA - life is an emergent system.

Indeed, which is why, despite its popularity, to compare DNA to a computer program, is really quite an inapt analogy.

[LibertarianSchmoe]

Unless, that is, we want to posit the existence of uterine elves or fallopian angels

Wasn't "Fallopian Angels" a television program in the seventies?

[b_sharp]

"Indeed, which is why, despite its popularity, to compare DNA to a computer program, is really quite an inapt analogy."

Quite true dear fellow.

However if one is familiar with functions which take a function as a parameter, and functions which modify their behaviour based on parameter type as well as value, using the analogy can be somewhat instructional.