Code, in a general sense, is the language understood by the computer. Computers don't understand natural language. As such the human language has to be converted into a set of "words" that are understood by the computer. The words that initiate a standard action when used in a program are called keywords. The arrangement of keywords for successful execution of a desired computation is called syntax. The set of keywords and syntax form a programming language.
The term code by itself is so general that it doesn't convey much information. It can be useful to think of code in terms of instructions versus data. That is, computer code uses data as an input, does some processing, then spits out the output.
In addition to referring to the code itself, you can use the term as a verb – to code is synonymous with coding or programming.
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