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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -Arthur C Clarke Whenever "magic" is mentioned in articles like these, you can probably
by willismichael 14y ago
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -Arthur C Clarke
Whenever "magic" is mentioned in articles like these, you can probably safely substitute "higher-order abstractions that aren't available in the language(s) I'm accustomed to". Of course it's easier (and more fun) to say "magic".
- bloaf 14y agoThe best use of "magic" I've seen came from a kids TV show where the protagonist would simply refer to new or mysterious things as "magic" even if the other characters offered him an explanation of how the thing worked. To me it was a perfect example of black-box abstraction. Its magic because we know what it is doing, but the how is not intuitively obvious.
- gknoy 14y agoAnd, as long as we know how to invoke it reliably and properly, we don't __need__ to understand how. (Though, being nerds, we often want to.) I agree: "Magic" is one of the best shorthands for "We can explain that later but for now let's assume this works".