Group items tagged

"Another headline pops up: "Scientists aim to make computer that thinks like a human". And I think no, No, NO! Don't, whatever you do, do that. Even if Ray Kurzweil is the one suggesting it's coming." (Charles Arthur | Technology | guardian.co.uk)

There's something deeply appealing about making logic manifest and producing tools that do intense computational work for you at the click of a button; there can also be something deeply obsessive about being able to hone software to make it more elegant and efficient and, to the programmer's eye, more beautiful. The designers of software usually aspire to economy of code, clarity in its operation, and powerful algorithms that, with mathematical and logical beauty, do the work of generating a sophisticated result. We tend to look down on the "kludge," the clumsy addition to fix a problem, or the brute force approach of working case by case to force a desired result (although, to be sure, I've seen enough code to know that the awkward hack is ubiquitous). § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM