Paul Ford: What Is Code? Reading Response
"I'd happily talk to people from Google or Apple but they so rarely reenter the general population."
lmao
...the world-wide web is what I know best
But the web is only one small part of the larger world of software development.
"A computer is a clock with benefits. They all work the same, doing second-grade math, one step at a time:
- a computer is documentation of time, but what is time? Computer is a time-based medium, this reminds me of how javascript functions, it reads what the user tells it to do in chronological order, and performs those actions sequentially in an extremely, extremely short amount of time.
"You, using pen and paper can do anything a computer can; you just can't do those things billions of times per second."
This helps me put computer programming into perspective, because going into this I had some fears of the computer, not knowing how to utilize it because I am overwhelmed with how much it can do, but essentially I can do whatever the computer can do, it just does it faster. And understanding that will help me build a strong structure of computer language.
"There are programmers for everything."
I always knew every piece of technology I use was made by a coder, such as my tv, my phone, my watch, but I never really noticed the great detail that goes into creating each element of a piece of technology, a piece of a function that leads to another function that creates a system within another system which creates an object that I can utilize everyday. How crazy.
Everything is a part of a system, maybe within one other or multiple systems.
"You can make computers do wonderful things, but you need to understand their limits."
I think this is very important to computer design/ communications design, I have to understand its boundaries so I can creatively think of what to do within those boundaries, and possibly go beyond those boundaries by utilizing the understanding of them.
***So is hardware the foundation for endless software? Is software controlled by the creators of hardware?
"If coders don't run the world, they run the things that run the world."
AKA coders run the world.
I remember using scratch in middle school and I was so confused, but once I got the little fox to dance I was so satisfied.
"Your goal is to turn your code into an explicit list of instructions that can be carried out by interconnected logic gates, thus turning your code into something that can be executed - software."
SO, every file, every composed group of code must have a purpose, an end goal, a result(s); generally speaking, yes almost all code is just the transfer of information and data and communicating that from one point to another, but there has to be a purpose beyond that from my understanding, because it will help build and formulate the characteristics of the webpage, or any formate of code.
***Computers understand information/ instructions by going character by character, every letter or symbol matters.
Programming helps put information of things into groups like branches and to get something from that branch you dont have to go in every single time and specifically pull out what you want you just have to identify the branch the thing is on?
Essentially a memory, compartmentalized by the coder and the computer has the ability to go into each memory and utilize it.