They Live in a World controlled by Programs, but Know Nothing about Programming

Note the spelling here. Program uses American spelling. while Programming uses English spelling. Both are verbs, denoting an activity.

Because Computers were invented in England, and Programming them was invented by Ada Lovelace (who had a programming language named after her).

Computer Scientists moved to America after WWII as part of the brain drain then. And after that Computers were developed there (especially Software) - at an incredibly rapid pace. The spelling became American also.

Britain (and the British Empire) was forgotten.

Sentiment Analysis

Some strange things end up in my inbox and this one of them, courtesy of O'Reilly, the Computer Publisher.

A young man behind a Laptop is speaking in a video in a frame on the right, while a summary of what he is saying is shown in the wide center column. A scrolling outline is shown in the left column,.An innovative format that takes some getting used to.

If you like learning (and most people do not) this is will help you understand Computers and their Software. That is now running the world.

What’s getting Agile down?

Hackernoon

Leading agile demands a different skillset from leaders. It demands different leaders.

The world has changed fast, and where the old world of “command and control” used to be acceptable — go away and do this and come back to tell me when you’ve done it — the move from a team that needs closer support (or scrutiny and micromanagement to some) to a team that can look after itself, has caught many off guard. Agile teams need to be exactly that, agile. The overhead can be reduced, and in place of managers and micro managers, we need a new type of leader. 

Servant leaders, who understand how to empower teams, have a service mindset and are in tune with unleashing team potential, and understanding the sweet spot between flow, quality, value, and team wellbeing.

The Rise of the Bots

I am referring here to Software agent as described in Wikipedia. Whose definition of this is excellent - and is well-worth the time spent reading it.

There presence in politics, is now overwhelming - where attack bots are used commonly. I hardly need remark that these are Software, that only appeared in the Fifties. And which now dominates our lives - without our being, the least bit aware of it.

I repeat - Software now runs our lives, while we are busy, looking the other way. And we wonder, why the world is acting so strangely.

It is being run by Bots, who now have a life of their own. And take Money to operate.

IBM and Rational Software

I will begin this posting by referring you to the Wikipedia entry for Rational Software.

I was working in Silicon Valley in the Nineties - and I can remember the impact of Rational on it.

I could see the programmers in the company I worked for - were producing lousy software. And I could see Rational had a method for producing good software - that they were not interested in. A bit crazy, yes?

But the craziness got worse, when IBM bought Rational. It bought a fine company with a brilliant future - and did nothing with it.

IBM had shot itself in the foot - once again!

A natural programmer, is a different kind of person

Anyone in the Software industry knows this, but they also keep it a secret. Because they want a good supply of mediocre programmers available - because they are much cheaper.

I was once one of those mediocre programmers myself - back in the Eighties.

Now I am trying to learn Data Science - thirty years later. And I am trying to learn Keras. And I have no idea, what their friendly documentation is talking about.

These guys live in a world of their own. They not only want to be paid well - they are picky about the kinds of work they will accept. They only want work that will advance them in their chosen specialty.

F#

I am learning programming, as a hobby. The software I want to study must (1) be simple enough for my old mind to understand (2) be supported by a free IDE (3) have plenty of explanatory documentation.

F#, being a Functional language, is designed to be simple. Microsoft provides a free version of its excellent Visual Studio IDE, that if it is built with the proper workloads (that do take of lot of time to install) support it directly. And there is a ton of explanatory documentation - of which Microsoft's is probably the best.

An Easy Way to Enforce User Recognition in Software

Every web application consists of two parts - (1) what the user sees, and responds to, and (2) all the processing that goes on in the Server, somewhere on the Internet, in response to the User's input.

The server side is usually divided into a part that interfaces with a Database - and a Controller, that decides what happens next (often called the Business Logic). This is often referred to as the MVC (Model, View, Controller) pattern. Messages flow between all these components, to keep them coordinated with each other.

All too often. the user (and his needs) are ignored by the companies who write the software everyone uses. They assume the user exists to serve them - and not the other way around.

In my opinion, this is not a desirable situation - and should be changed, to make the user more important.

This can be done easily, by including a button on everything the User sees, asking "Are you having a problem with this?" If the user responds, he must be given a response number, and the promise that the company is working on this problem.

But to make this really work, these problems must also be listed in a public database, that everyone can view. This information can be searched by other programs, to show what companies are responding to their user inputs - or anything else, that anyone wants to know.

The object here is transparency to make visible, information that is usually hidden.

Religion and Software

This is about the relationship between everyone and their world, that has gotten as bad as it can possibly get.

People have observed, correctly - that their world is not good for them. And they have set out to destroy it - in any way possible, and there are plenty of ways available to them.

This cannot be understood, unless something else is understood - the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. A distinction that most people today want to deny. They are certain that they are good, and other people are bad - and this contrast does not exist inside themselves.

They think they are much simpler than they really are - and resist, with all their strength, knowing more about themselves.

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This, I think, summarizes the situation nicely. Mankind has reached a crisis, that it will survive - but in a greatly altered condition, that we cannot predict now.

One way of looking at this, is by looking at our latest technology - Software. And specifically, how it treats data. I have avoided this subject myself, regarding it as somewhat distasteful - but now I am being forced to look at it.

And being forced to recognize something we have always known - that there was ordinary reality, and something else - that manages this reality.

Another way of saying this, is that we are religious beings - acutely aware of of the spirits behind everything.

How on earth do we integrate religion and software? Frankly, I do not know - but I know it has to be done. Perhaps we could start with the attitude of programmers to their data. Something they are quite willing, even eager, to talk about - in front of the Internet cameras - that seem to be everywhere!

We live in a world that has become aware of itself. A vastly different world. That is sometimes called Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML).

As I set here, wearing my pajamas, in front of my Laptop, that is connected to the Internet. I am amazed by what I just wrote.

We have created another world, that is completely different from any of the other ones that we have created. And we don't know what to do with it.