5 Jan
2012
5 Jan
'12
6:27 p.m.
? This is
definitely the case.? It's pretty tough to find a programmer thes$
C: I hate to
tell you but was always the case. Unless the programmer was wor$ > This is definitely the case.? It's pretty
tough to find a programmer
> these days who has any idea of how a computer actually works, even
> at the assembly language level.? This is something that many (most?)
> people think is "just fine", and some have even go so far as to
> fling around statements like "why should I learn to be a mechanic
> just to drive a car?" ...thinking that's an appropriate analogy when
> it's not.
It _is_ an appropriate analogy - for end users.
Not for programmers.
C: I hate to tell you but was always the case.
Actually, it wasn't. The very earliest computers _did_ demand an
understanding of their workings of their programmers.
How many housewives (or their husbands!) know how to
fix a washing
machine?
Again, appropriate analogy if we're talking about end users;
inappropriate analogy if we're talking about programmers.
But what does programming w/objects have to do
w/interrupt vector
tables???
About as much as installing cruise control in a car has to do with the
universal joints on the driving wheels.
In each case, if all you're doing is the one, you don't really need to
know much about the other. But few people do only one thing. And, at
least in my experience, it is occasionally useful to know things about
other parts of any system, even ones very distant from the ones you're
working with.
I thought that we want to one day communicate w/our
computers solely
by voice.
Maybe you do. "We" don't, at least not to the extent that I'm part of
that "we". On output, voice is a horrible channel (as compared to
vision), with low bandwidth and poor exploitation of the human sense it
depends on. On input, voice...well, we don't actually know; nobody has
built a good voice input system yet. I might like to play with the
possibility. I do not, now, want to switch entirely to it, and won't
until the technology has matured. I suspect - and a guess is all it
is, at this point - that it will prove difficult to achieve suitable
levels of precision and bandwidth through voice. I also suspect - and,
again, it's just a guess - that it's harder, for most people, to
develop a voice that can speak constantly for eight hours a day than to
develop hands that can type for eight hours a day.
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