How to handle problems that the demons inside a computer throws up. Sabu Francis shows the way. (This is an article written for Indian Architect & Builder in 1995)...
The smooth, well-oiled clickety clack of the computer keyboard suddenly grinds into a halt and you get that horrible deja-vu sensation: Haven't we come here before? It took me eight long years to get over that sensation, but occasionally it still creeps up onto me -- just as I thought it was safe to step into the world of computers.
So here is my set of pet points to ponder upon. I open up these up occasionally, dust them; add a few points but I mainly reread them like a devout Muslim at his Koran. It reinforces my self-esteem.
There is no such thing as a friendly computer. You can say that your car is friendly. It is a matter of getting used to. When you were learning to drive, it must have looked like one big, ungainly set of metal parts. Now, you are so used to it that you take it for granted. Therefore, it has become friendly. Don't we take our friends for granted?
Computers are not like cars: One has been designed for very abstract purposes whereas the other is for a very specific function. It is possible to optimize a piece of machinery so that its purpose in life has reached its ultimatum. However, what do you with one that never really had a purpose of its own? It occasionally throws up some facet of its application that we had never encountered before.
Computers invite change. People resist them. So you have a conflict. I have seen computers when it filled up an entire room at my old college. Now we have computers that can be filled up with more information than can be stored in a room! What do we really do with it? Write letters, check spellings and evade taxes. When you are using something so massively powerful for things that are fairly simple, occasionally you do get stumped by some very esoteric eccentricities. I discovered some tricks recently that told you how to slow down your computer. Some of those older games that were designed for slower computers work so fast on todays computers that we humans never have a chance against those screen androids. Unless, of course, we slow down the computer itself.
Computers are a classic example of design using some very basic building blocks. When we get impressed by one of those computer programmes we scarcely realize what is going on in the machine. A lot of zeros and ones are tossed around furiously to generate the images on the monitor. Maths using just two symbols (binary maths); is all that there is to computers. In primitive societies, during long forgotten eras, people could count only till two. Computer maths is akin to that. It is often so boring that programmers almost always use -- computer languages -- programmes that translate instructions to the maths required by the computer. Unfortunately, this translation or compilation process is sometimes inaccurate. That is the origin of those nagging irritations -- what are known as bugs in programmes. (The word 'bug' was first used when Mary Cooper, the creator of COBOL actually found a dead moth in the innards of a computer!)
Computers; in the form we know (personal or micro-computers), are designed to be constructed from a set of parts that in itself are multipurpose in nature. At the garage of one of the computer gurus, two whiz kids sat and assembled the world's first personal computer using parts that were readily available -- albeit for different purposes. That was the day when the personal computer was born. Your friendly neighbourhood computer assembler is not much different from those guys. Invariably, there are parts that don't see eye to eye. Often it may never bother you. Occasionally, you may find that your floppy drive is on the war path with your CD-ROM and many other such internecine problems.
In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift describes this curious incident that describes one feature of two different types of computers that are in use today. The king of Lilliput hurt his finger when he was breaking his egg at the big end. He therefore made a decree stating that henceforth eggs shall only be broken at the little end. This sparked a revolt amongst the Lilliputians who firmly believed in breaking eggs at the big end and they ran away and waged war from another country, Blefuscu, on this matter. They became the 'big-endians'
This war is still going on. The Little-Endians are the computers based on the Intel micro-processor. This includes the common IBM compatibles and the Big-Endians are the computers based on the Motorola microprocessor. The most popular in that range are the Apple computers. What is the difference? The Big-Endians arranges their bytes (eight binary digits collected together form a byte) from bottom to top in the computer's memory; whereas the Little-Endians arrange them the other way around. It is hard to believe -- but one of hurdles between the exchange of data created on an Apple computer with that of the IBM type computer is this curious problem from Gulliver's Travels.
Of course, there are ways around the problem and one way of solving problems on computers is to push it to a different department. So you do have programmes that does a big-endian/little-endian swapping whenever required. You also have some dedicated computer chips that too can do this swapping for you. Computers based on the 'Power-PC' microprocessor have a bi-endiancapability. Which means, it can arrange the bytes, whichever way you ask them.
The greatest hurdle to the usage of computers, are ourselves. We have such inane capability for transforming the subtle to the ridiculous. Take for example, the preponderance of computer programmers to imitate natural activity. In CAD and paint programmes, there is such a plethora of features that imitate procedures used in a non-computerized environment. Many of them come in your way of your work once you become a power user. If programmers had their way, the wheel would have never been designed. After all, where in nature do you notice a wheel used as a form of locomotion? It is all in one's mind, someone had said. The majority of problems that we encounter on computers could be solved once our mind accepts innovation and sweeps away old dogmas.
There is this word that summarises the problems that one encounters with a computer: Interface. You have the person-computer interface problems, you have the computer language-binary maths interface problems. You have the computer part - computer part interface problem, the computer type-computer type interface hassle, the available computing power- required computing power mismatch and the greatest of it all, we all have the earlier dogma-new concepts barrier.
End note:
I am typing this article on an Apple Power-PC Macintosh and I hope to transfer this article to my IBM-Compatible machine and print it out from there. If you do see this article, it may mean that I have managed to mediate between the Lilliputians and the Blefuscu-ians.
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