Great article, the last part about understanding programming languages and computers as user interfaces and human constructs is great. I love understanding why

Great article, the last part about understanding programming languages and computers as user interfaces and human constructs is great. I love understanding why things are as they are. Too many people seem to see programming languages as the language the computer speaks, without realising that they're actually at least 2 steps removed, with the precise intent of making it easier for people to use a computer. My favourite offshoot is this tragic LWN post about a fairly amazing sounding debugging tracer that "three people in the entire world have ever run": http://lwn.net/1999/0121/a/mec.html http://lwn.net/1999/0121/a/mec.html