A Minor First

My trusted HP desktop is presently on the blink. These episodes loom larger than life despite just being minor malfunctions. Subjectively it feels as if a huge crack has appeared in Reality itself. Our habits are our worst addictions.

Computer Days (in the same context as Doctor Days) are relatively rare, but memories of the last time rush in like a tornado. They cost about the same as Doctor Days as well, but in that category we carry no insurance.

Just how rare are they? Well, until I start keeping a log I’ll never know. The other First today is that this post is being written on my HP laptop. The Internet is unaffected. The last time it went down was February 2, 2013.

Celebrity Products

I first encountered the curious phenomenon of product loyalty writ large when I bought an Apple II Plus computer circa 1980. What I’d really wanted was a Radio Shack TRS-80, but I could not justify its stiff price. The Apple was more affordable. In my efforts to learn how to use that product, I got involved with an Apple User Group and read various trade magazines centered on Apple products. To my surprise I found myself mingling with what felt like members of a tribe or of a cult.

In many ways the Apple II+ was an incomplete sort of product when I bought it. I had to purchase a special card for around $300 just to make it display 80 characters on its screen—and I chose that route because, even with that extra expenditures, it still cost less than the TRS-80. Nor did the product have a very long official life. It was only produced for three-and-a-half years (6/1979-12/1982). Then came the Apple IIe (1/1983), then the Macintosh (1/1984), and so on. I bought one of each of those as well but then, thanks to external influences—namely Brigitte’s work environment at Gale Research—I got to know the IBM PC and parted company with Apple for good. It became obvious to me that Apple was running a strange new kind of company in which the deliberate obsolescing of its products was a policy—and a successful policy only because the company enjoyed a new kind of customer better described as the fiercely loyal fan.

I’d gotten into computers in search of utility. But computing had another base: people for whom owning that product was participating in a kind elite. And Apple did its utmost to foster the feeling that, being an Apple user, one was a member of a vanguard. One bought a computer, to be sure, but really joined a faith, complete with its prophet, Steve Jobs.

Now this phenomenon did not stop with the Macintosh—or even the death of the prophet  (5/2011). It has continued on with music ( ITunes, 4/2000), telephones (IPhone, 6/2007) and now with presumably world-conquering apps like Apple Pay (10/2014).

I believe I am correct in surmising that Apple also, more generally, invented the Celebrity Product. Now that phrase is used in commerce—and has been so used for at least a generation—as designating products endorsed by celebrities. But the meaning I give that phrase refers to products that are owned because their ownership bestows a gilding of celebrity on the purchaser—and it matters not at all how good the product is or whether better products might be out there. Apple’s products meet this test. They did so even back when I first bought my Apple II+. Better products were already on the market. But spending on toys is never really about the toy. They’re about the Toy Plus. The Toy Plus participating in celebrity.

Electronic Detritus

Or things we hate (fear?) to throw away. My last post on this subject was on June 12, 2009 (link) where I reported hauling an SUV’s worth of obsolete computers to Goodwill—thus just a shade over three years ago. Now, way past schedule, I am beginning to think about clearing up the huge disorder caused in this house by the installation of central air. A little “walk about” this morning—first without and then with a camera—resulted in a new inventory of our electronic obsolescence. Herewith some annotations, going clockwise:

• Under the red box, a Smith Corona electric typewriter. It has only sentimental value. If the power fails, it won’t work either.
• A computer complete. Not ours. But the person who owns it (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) does not have the heart to junk it.
• A monitor I used when I was still working. It did not get recycled in 2009 because it would not fit into the SUV already stuffed to the ceiling with other big beige objects.
• An inkjet printer replaced with a laser printer, but, you know... You never know.
• A Cannon copier (under the table). It’s heart is pure and its lungs still work, but you can’t get it to pick up a single sheet of paper—whether using the front or the back feeder.
• Last, one of about six retired telephones and a keyboard that, someday, “may come in handy.”

Now concerning the third item, that massive monitor, it did come in handy just a couple of weeks ago. Brigitte’s slender monitor failed. Wrestling with it in agonies that recalled Laocoon, I got the old monitor and installed it. It worked! It took over the whole table, but it worked. I replaced the defective monitor—and learned to my delight that Staples was willing to take it. They even rang it up and gave me a slip with the credit I’d earned. The figure on that slip? $0.00. Well, you win some and you loose some. For me, getting rid of these things would be victory enough—until I would discover, three years from now, another cohort of electronic corpses hiding in our nooks and crannies.

As for that order making, I’ve made a start. Now I’ll just need about a week to recover from the shock of my walk about.

The Joys of the Craft

People place computer programming right next to accounting, mathematics, and economics, the dismal science. Only nerds and unathletic teen-agers could possibly pursue such occupations. There are also people who remember the weather on any one day, and at any one hour of that day all the way back to childhood. You name a date and hour. They will give you chapter and verse. Poor souls. Programmers aren’t quite as bad, but close. The public rolls its eyes. That programming can be high adventure, drama, and exalting, creative activity seems not quite credible. You want to play 0 and 1? Most people opt out.

Back in 1975 one Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., employed by IBM to manage the development of that company’s OS/360, a mainframe operating system, wrote a book entitled The Mythical Man-Month. It became an instant classic within the weird cabal of people who program computers. Back then I lived in the Paradise/Hell of code. I got the book and started reading it at once. Wonderful book, wonderful. Now the other day the book fell into my hands again. It lay in a box filled with mostly old science fiction volumes the Magee household was giving to the library; they’re running out of space. Was there anything in the box I wanted for myself? There it was, The Mythical Man-Month! And, of course, out of the box it came. A day or so later I opened the book again, once more delighted.

Now this book is about the inner aspects of building very large, complex programming systems; that’s what operating systems are. Thus the book deals with the paradoxical aspects of complexity. Yes, it is about computer system—but then, again, not really. It applies to all great enterprises—indeed, as the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy put it, it applies to Life, the Universe, and Everything. It transcends its subject narrowly viewed. But what immediately caught my attention in the 1970s was Fred Brooks’ insight into an activity the public does not understand. To summarize this insight, let me quote a section from Brooks’ first chapter. The section is titled The Joys of the Craft. The passage also illuminates the scope of the book.

     Why is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as his reward?
     First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design. I think this delight must be an image of God’s delight in making things, a delight shown in the distinctness and newness of each leaf and each snowflake.
     Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people. Deep within, we want others to use our work and find it helpful. In this respect the programming system is not essentially different from the child’s first clay pencil holder “for Daddy’s office.”
     Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning. The programmed computer has all the fascination of the pinball machine or the jukebox mechanism, carried to the ultimate.
     Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task. In one way or another the problem is ever new, and its solver learns something: sometimes practical, sometimes theoretical, and sometimes both.
     Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. (As we shall see later, this very tractability has its own problems.)

That last parenthetical statement puts the absolute stamp of authenticity on this book. The very freedom of creation is itself a challenge—which few people awarely recognize unless they have visited those realms. The next and last section of this initial chapter deals with The Woes of the Craft. In a way they almost match the joys—but only almost. They are present in all creative work—one reason why I described my life in that realm as Paradise/Hell.

For the impatient, the “mythical man-month” refers to the curious fact that in great tasks, where by definition everything is connected with everything else, you can’t get the job done faster, or even on-time, by simply piling on the labor. Increasing the man-power can actually slow down the process rather than speeding it up.