When will we be able to increase our intelligence so we can all program computers? Or should computer program themselves?

 

  Technically speaking (no pun intended there), everyday people are increasingly programming computers. As an example, many modern-day computer-based devices that we use and/or own are more powerful and perform more functions that NASA’s Apollo astronauts (1963 to 1972) had aboard their spacecraft or were used by Mission Control on the ground.  The astronauts themselves did not in every circumstance have the knowledge and expertise to program or even operate all computations, that task largely fell to NASA’s computer experts and mathematicians.  Today, even some five-year-old children can program devices.  More and more these days, the manufacturers and customer service turn programming (or advanced programming), customized programming, personalization over to the end user. 

~

Ruddy computers!

I am not a good typist at all, even on a proper keyboard. I had just about finished a response, when I inadvertently hit some mystery key or mouse combination and it replaced the Answermug screen with what looked like a home-page for a Mississippi tourist-office site! Oh, and deleted my answer.

So, second attempt....

Clearly I for one lack the intelligence and learning ability to cope with programming. I made little progress with BASIC (Hewlett-Packard and Amstrad editions) and none with Digital Research's LOGO. The latter was a very abbreviated language capable of practical use but developed first (said the text-book) for teaching school-children something it called "structured programming". A friend gave me an old Sinclair ZX computer and a stack of Sinclair-published magazines full of programme listings written in both BASIC and Assembler by enthusiasts; but they were all lost on me.

And yet...

Are we forgetting something? Surely the real use for all that MENSA-level intelligence comes before even switching the computer on?

What is the task's nature and purpose?  Is it in fact even necessary? Who will perform it? 

If the task can involve using a computer, is the task impossible, extremely difficult or merely a bit awkward without? Will the computer help it or hinder it, and in what way? Is the computer even really necessary? For example, you would not programme a computer to set your home's central-heating; you use the boiler's front panel controls and the room thermostats. Nor for your household accounts - you can use a published spread-sheet programme like Excel.  

Is it necessary to write a programme or can it use the more hidden bits of existing software, such as Excel, or the specialist ones like Access and CAD packages?

If programming for others, what is their general level of knowledge and skill in both the specific task and in using a computer?  It is no use writing 100 000 000 lines of technically-immaculate code if its screen appearance is unpleasant and awkward, and worse, the programme makes the task so difficult, frustrating and inefficient you'd be welcomed with open arms (6 feet away...) by Microsoft. It is also a waste if the user does not understand the programme's application - you could for example be a skilled user of an industrial-grade CAD programme but ability to draw a complicated object is not a synonym for ability to design it. A potential trap for the unwary user lulled by finding the programme easy to use, into thinking that means skill at the task.

'
Finally, again by pre-mains switch intelligence... Asking yourself, Why learn programming? For direct work or career development? Genuinely useful purposes outside of work? An intellectual hobby? All perfectly valid reasons, of course.

'''
For an example of learning what you need learn, my company sent me on a two-day "Introduction to MS Access" course because it thought my area of work would need it. Access is fiendishly complicated, unintuitive and difficult to learn, but as the tutor explained, it lets you create very powerful databases that have neat, unfussy operating screens and are easy to use by people with very modest computer knowledge. In the end it was wasted because the need did not arise! What I did need to a moderate level was Excel, particularly its graph-plotting facilities - and I can honestly say those for Cartesian graphs were good, that for polar graphs it calls "Radar Charts", was dreadful! This post was edited by Durdle at November 12, 2020 5:21 PM MST