...
Here’s a case study. I once asked our secretary to backup our shared mini-computer in the morning, before the rest of the company showed up. I wrote down, on paper, a simple set of instructions, that covered every case I could think of. For example, I wrote down “Go to any terminal. If you see c:> on the screen [ed. i.e. a developer forgot to logout before going home the night before], type ‘logout’. When you see ‘login:’ type ‘operator’, and then when you see ‘password:’ type ‘yyy’. Then type ‘backup’.”
I came in one morning and found the following on EVERY screen in the office:
c:> logout
login: operator
password: yyy
c:> logout
login: operator
password: yyy
c:> logout
login: operator
password: yyy
…
I had to ask her why she did this – being a programmer, I couldn’t understand what was in her mind. It turned out that the concept of ’sequence’ was not bred into her thought process. In essence, she treated the instructions in a declarative, pattern-matching manner. After every action, she re-scanned the whole sheet of instructions and picked the closest match, instead of treating the instructions in a sequential manner as I had intended. Every time she successfully logged in as operator, the closest match on the sheet of instructions was “if you see C:>, type ‘logout’”, so she did that. Again and again.
The paradigmatic chasm between programmers and normal humans is huge. We can’t even recognize that programmable computers are a burden to the general population, not a boon.
What we need are programming languages that allow software engineers to produce products – encased in epoxy – that provide solutions to specific problems. Whether we choose to use programmable computers inside the epoxy is our own problem, not the customers’.
Wow.
I think I now understand how there is a market for apple products.
I truly never understood before.
