My parse of "minimizing code" is that it's an approach to writing code, with the goal of writing less code. I would expect it to include things like terse idioms, DRY, preferring data over code, preferring configuration over code, preferring libraries over rolling your own, managing scope, etc. All things about writing different code, which solves the problem but is not always semantically equivalent.

By contrast, minification is mechanical semantic-preserving syntax transformations done to a completed program after it written.