Monday, November 10, 2008

What is a computer?

As a side note: Well, I really do intend to update M W F. All I have to do is put life aside occasionally...

But, to continue my last post, the question of "what is programming?" leads into the question of "what is a computer?" and that gets to be a tricky little question.

Most people think that a "computer" is what they are looking at / using when they read this blog. But that doesn't even begin to cover what it is.

Looking back to the start of the computer age, you have systems like ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer) and the like, where you have a room full of vacuum tube electronics.

Or a modern microcontroller, the size of a a grain of rice!

And everything in between. How many people look at their TV remote control and think "computer"? You may not be able to program it, but someone wrote the software for it...

Professionally, I write software for very small embedded systems. And have a lot of fun doing it.

2 comments:

pebbles said...

Rewarded by the "micro" things in life.

It is refreshing to see this.
Few of the programmers I know actually enjoy programming in its essence.

It is mostly a popular means to ends these days.
Kids are well programmed, these days.

If only I'd followed my programming.

I wouldn't just be some dumb kid.

Bill said...

I'm on a mailing list (piclist) with a lot of EE's that write their own code.

People like that enjoy working down to the bare metal. I'm just a bit unusual that I'm completely in software, not hardware.

As for "dumb kid", if you're looking around for stuff like this, you're above 99.999% of the people out there.