![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Taking the long view
For a long time, I thought it was an evolutionary anomaly that humans of my generation and around it are able to write computer code to make machines do tasks. How does this even work at all? Why am I, why is anyone, good at this job? What does it have to do with farming and hunting?
Then I realized, the only way to frame an answer is by considering the act of programming within the act of communicating via language, which is something humans have been doing in very complex forms since there were humans, and in less complex forms before that.
A hundred thousand generations, more or less, to develop language. Two or three generations for computer programming to emerge as a discipline. That's obviously zero time for any adaptation, so a thing that looks brand-new to the world from my point of view actually fits entirely within the abilities of a creature formed by a world that never saw computers, printed circuits, electricity, and an endless list of other components needed in the modern world to put this laptop on my desk.
Turning this comparison on its head is kind of startling: For a human to draw pictures of bison on a wall using charcoal and animal bone, it must also apparently be capable of learning how to write advanced database queries in SQL. Apparently you don't get the first without also getting the second.
Then I realized, the only way to frame an answer is by considering the act of programming within the act of communicating via language, which is something humans have been doing in very complex forms since there were humans, and in less complex forms before that.A hundred thousand generations, more or less, to develop language. Two or three generations for computer programming to emerge as a discipline. That's obviously zero time for any adaptation, so a thing that looks brand-new to the world from my point of view actually fits entirely within the abilities of a creature formed by a world that never saw computers, printed circuits, electricity, and an endless list of other components needed in the modern world to put this laptop on my desk.
Turning this comparison on its head is kind of startling: For a human to draw pictures of bison on a wall using charcoal and animal bone, it must also apparently be capable of learning how to write advanced database queries in SQL. Apparently you don't get the first without also getting the second.