Bugs

I know, those who know me, are going to raise their eye-brows, looking at this title (not this, from an illiterate, they would say!) . Where as about 7 decades ago, people around would eagerly read further looking out for, to keep handy, yet another possible trick to keep those bed-bugs away from their homes.

I would not have even collided into this question, had it been asked under a sub-category ‘computers’. But when somebody perhaps chose to look at the philosophical aspect of the chaos caused by bugs in a software program, I could not contain the ‘cashew-nut’ tendency that is within me too! (That nut was in a great hurry to pop out, so it had to stay on the outside of the fruit!).

All these gadget that we have been discovering, improvising, innovating, and inventing are to sophisticate our basic actions, our basic functions like mobility (walking), seeing, hearing, talking, carrying loads, fighting, defending, preserving, etc. External improvements just sophisticate essentially, and do very little to improve the ‘quality’ of life. With simple weapons, we defend ourselves from or ‘eliminate’ just a few people face-to-face. With sophistication, we remotely ‘destroy’ (not just eliminate) a whole lot! The tendency is still the same. The sophistication in handling finances can plunder the economy globally (recession).

It is the ‘chaos’ created by ‘large-scale-effect’ of such sophistications that the asker wanted to point out and then ask ‘why’.

That is why, the ‘monkey-mind’ has to first evolve, otherwise, handing over a beautiful flower garland into the hands of a monkey would only result in crushing those beautifully woven garland of flowers! (With some experience, developed super-powers are hesitant about ‘technology-transfer’. But, with political chaos, the monkey-minds within there too, the sanctity of such hesitation gets diverted elsewhere, like that diversion of the sanctity of efforts for controlling pollution getting diluted into trading of pollution-entitlements!).

The wisdom in the ancients is perhaps in their ability to restrict all the sophistication to within themselves (their physical being, instead of materials around), and yet not lacking anything! We are yet to catch up with their level of handling material aspects of life, with all our sophistications! Evidence is there, when they could record the distances to those planets with fair accuracy, without scientific instruments of modern day. They gave the concept of mathematics, (including the precious ‘zero’), with adequate warning, not to stay stuck to decimal system, which is just a matter of convenience for ‘reading’ (like those monitor display of visuals) where as, for computing and processing, any smaller base, starting with binary is better (those ‘vinculum’ formulas are evidences).

Anyway, I made the answer concise to the extent, my own sophistication at brevity allows, and postponed and relocated the ‘scratching of the itches here and there’ to this post!

Psn(16th June, 2010)

http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100615170704AAcT7d2
Is software development chaotic ?
One developer will improve some software containing 2^N bugs, so that there are few or no bugs remaining. The software is then released.Another developer attempts to "improve" the software containing few bugs, but the number of bugs doubles at each of their "improvement" attempts. The software finished with 2^M bugs.The software is then released on unsuspecting users.So the quality of the released software is wildly fluctuating.

My reply:
Please try to look at the 'nature' of computers or that computing capability, and what it is designed 'after'....

We designed a wheel, a bullock cart, a bicycle and then automobiles, airplanes, spacecraft. It is transportation, starting with just our legs.
Medicine is about tampering expertly with our physical well being, to suit our 'luxury' to drift away with 'natural' way of living (people who adhere to the way we are designed to live, need less of medical help, stay away from hospitals. Others, fix bugs with medicines, which sometimes cures, and sometimes, gives scope for yet another set of bugs, we call as medical side-effects, fall outs, complications.)
Electricity was about lighting, heating, cooking etc initially.
Phones were about hearing even from a distance.
Movies, photos, cameras were about preserving images to re-live those visuals at a leisure, once again.

When we attempted to 'improve' our memory using gadgets, then it is "Enter the Dragon" called computers. From just memory machines, we started 'processing those memories'. We replicate our mind. So all the chaos that we carry is simply transferred into the software, aware or unawares. The design of the software almost reflects the mind of the design-engineer. The grasp of the concepts simply get reflected into the software. A teenager asked to buy vegetables, sent for it with a bag and some money, could get stuck at a way-side conjurer (performing small tricks like magic for a living), and forget the main purpose of buying vegetables. If this kid has a mobile, 'patches' are possible from remote (by mother at home, calling him with miss-calls), to put him back on track.

When we disturb a group of ants, proceeding in a line, for some time, those poor things go criss-cross, appearing chaotic, and then get back to their task in a line. We keep criss-crossing all the time, any time, and go in a line only occasionally (that is the difference, when we retain the choice, the source of this choice being, self-awareness-capability!)

(A joke, if fatigued by this long answer: A mom, cleverly designs her kid, a software, teaching the kid to say "I want to sing" instead of 'want to urinate', to avoid embarrassment in public. Later, the father, the end-user of this program, faces the brunt, when the kid insists in the middle of the night that he wants to sing loudly NOW! The unsuspecting father types the command line 'kid, please sing slowly into my ears, since eveybody around is asleep'. The mom, the software-designer, was away to her parents place, to be able to fix the bug 'on time'!)