I don't know if you have tried "coding", writing the symbols that control a computer program, web page or app. People are always trying to invent another computer "language" and/or a simpler or faster, or less tedious way of creating code. So far, my impatience and the complexity of describing something valuable for a machine to do and creating code that does it have combined to discourage me from doing much.
There are philosophers and historians of computer technology. There are thousands of computer languages and new ones are being created all the time. At least when I was learning Fortran back in the 60's, there were levels of abstraction. At a low level, there was machine language and binary, the simple yes-and-no, go-and-no-go, 1 and 0 that rips through hundreds of circuits. At a high level, there was the word "sort" or "run" or "stop" and other machines and languages to convert simplified and summative words into directions the machine can carry out. There were sub-routines, small packages of code that would perform a sort or check a word and correct its spelling, that could be pasted into longer programs, shortening and speeding the creation of a bigger program.
I sit at my computer several hours every day and you probably do, too. I use my iPad every day for all sorts of activities. Maybe you remember the Y2K fears about our computer ridden society and you have heard of the extent that computers work on our electricity, traffic and water systems.
As impressive as the medieval cathedrals and the ancient Egyptian pyramids are, the mountains of code, painstakingly assembled, checked and corrected by countless humans in countless hours are our times' cathedrals and pyramids.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
