I simply can't envisage how someone who's presumably quite good with the
things, such as Avon, might think about what we'd call programming. So, any further thoughts very welcome...Tavia
The best novel I have read on this subject is 'a deepness in the sky' by Vernon Vinge. This is set several centuries in the future (and extends over several centuries). The practice of programming has become something like archaeology (or indeed socio-biology) in that code has been laid over code until the whole is completely beyond any order or rationalization, and modules which were created and adapted long ago may have unforeseen effects on present programming. One can easily imagine the corpus of a software system becoming not just unwieldy but literally too complex for anyone or any AI to begin to encompass or understand it.
I think you can fix up a possible future where welding bits and bobs together (or using screwdrivers) could be a realistic programming activity (this isn't in the vinge book, I'm making it up). Whole blocks of code could exist as physical black box systems which you literally bolt together to create programs. One could imagine this happening as a way of keeping out viruses and unknown side-effects. The individual components of the software would be literally sealed systems, with inputs and outputs defined and locked perhaps decades or centuries earlier. These sub-programmes are using up massive amounts of storage space, but it is just too complex to open them up and try to simplify them, and processing speeds are so fast that it could never be cost or time effective to do so. Instead they are simply mass-produced en bloc like engine components.
Avon, and any super-technician, would be distinguished by his/her familiarity with huge numbers of these components, and by an understanding of how they interact to make useful programmes. A subtle programmer would understand how installing slightly different versions of sub-routine blocs would subtly alter the operation of the overall system.
And that's what he's doing with his screwdriver
Alison
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