According to the best physics, the universe: isnt programmable; doesn't evolve deterministically; isnt described by functions over integers; isn't electronic; doesnt transmit power through programmable operation; isn't abstract; doesnt have causal powers through mere arrangements of parts; .. and so on.
Whatever it could mean, "computer" here is a strange term. I've no idea why people are so keen on it.
I take it to be a sort of humean-idealist-passivist theory: the world is an abstract set of discrete states that are just mere arrangements with no necessary connections; there is only pattern in these discrete states; these patterns are abstract and can be realised by mere number alone.
This is roughly somehting like an early 20th C. logicial positivist view, which was somewhat influential -- but it's wholey false, and throw out in scientific practice
FWIW I think it’s an interesting thought experiment. I think it’s especially interesting to draw the parallel to biology. Clearly our brains are doing computation by even the strictest definition of computer, so at which biological level does computation stop? A chunk of my brain is clearly doing computation, a neuron must be doing computation since that is the building block for our brains. Single cells must also be doing computation since a single cell had all of the computational knowledge encoded in it to build me. All of these processes are built upon physical reality, so it’s not that big a leap that similar processes might emerge elsewhere and at different scales and using different physical mechanisms.
Prototyping is certainly necessary but it shouldn't be at the cost of runtime performance – at least not too much –, because it will typically be very difficult to improve performance after the fact, which web development frameworks, and in particular shitty "web" applications like MS Teams are a testament to.
As always, it's about balance.