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In all seriousness, I've long thought of what I do as moving electrons around, getting pits onto CDs in the right place, things like that. Whatever I do in, say

by benched 13y ago

In all seriousness, I've long thought of what I do as moving electrons around, getting pits onto CDs in the right place, things like that. Whatever I do in, say, C++-land, is a means to those ends. An intermediate step. I arrived at that way of thinking after trying to define 'work', and deciding that it always consists of moving matter around (transporting it, putting it into a desired configuration).

TeMPOraL 13y ago
Interesting conclusion. However, notice that most of the energy (in thermodynamical sense) in this "work" is not spent on moving electrons in the computer around, nor even in the C++-land, but in concept-space. We do our work by building castles in the air out of abstract mental structures, and only then we formalize it in code that moves electrons around. When I look at the end results of work, I come to the same conclusion that indeed it ultimately consists of reconfiguring matter. That's what we need to do to reach whatever goals we have. Maybe the conceptspace work maps to the levels of intricacy of the end-result matter configuration, i.e. the more complex, precise thing you want to get, the more energy you need to expend on thinking rather than arranging atoms. It's easier to move a ton of bricks from one place to another than to design a microprocessor. So I guess that ultimately I agree with your comment. (disclaimer: writing this after two beers)
- deleted 13y ago
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bcbrown 13y ago
I disagree. What programming is doing is "telling [something] what to do." The difference is that instead of telling people what to do, we are telling inanimate idiots what to do, and therefore it is not necessarily pleasant, and highly pedantic. The output of a programmer is the output of their mind, not of their muscles. I've stacked boxes in a warehouse and that sort of work is altogether different from telling transistors when to output a high voltage instead of a low voltage, which is fundamentally what we are doing when we are programming.

by benched 13y ago

TeMPOraL 13y ago

Interesting conclusion. However, notice that most of the energy (in thermodynamical sense) in this "work" is not spent on moving electrons in the computer around, nor even in the C++-land, but in concept-space. We do our work by building castles in the air out of abstract mental structures, and only then we formalize it in code that moves electrons around. When I look at the end results of work, I come to the same conclusion that indeed it ultimately consists of reconfiguring matter. That's what we need to do to reach whatever goals we have. Maybe the conceptspace work maps to the levels of intricacy of the end-result matter configuration, i.e. the more complex, precise thing you want to get, the more energy you need to expend on thinking rather than arranging atoms. It's easier to move a ton of bricks from one place to another than to design a microprocessor. So I guess that ultimately I agree with your comment. (disclaimer: writing this after two beers)

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

bcbrown 13y ago

I disagree. What programming is doing is "telling [something] what to do." The difference is that instead of telling people what to do, we are telling inanimate idiots what to do, and therefore it is not necessarily pleasant, and highly pedantic. The output of a programmer is the output of their mind, not of their muscles. I've stacked boxes in a warehouse and that sort of work is altogether different from telling transistors when to output a high voltage instead of a low voltage, which is fundamentally what we are doing when we are programming.