word choice - While talking about a program, use `run` or `execute`?

run and execute have similar meaning when talking about a program, like we can say

run this program

or

execute your program

, but I'm not sure if they are the same.

Answer

They are the same.

One difference is, it's (in my experience) much less common to see execute used intransitively than it is to see run used intransitively.

So

The program is running

is fairly common, but

(*) The program is executing

is fairly rare (and would probably come across as simply wrong to some people).