An Ordinary Day in the Life of an Ordinary “Programmer”
What will a guy in 31st century think of 21st-century technology?
(This story has been originally published in October 2014 in Czech language on Nette framework’s forum, there is a reference in the plot)
„There is no better place for a business meeting“, this thought crossed his mind, while laying down on a deck chair after his fifth dive off the coral reef. He put his watch on and established a link with AI3000 (Artificial Intelligence 3000). A pleasant female voice spoke out: „What’s up?“
He tried to recall the details he had discussed with Roger between individual dives and the first outline of a solution which would meet the requirements. He knew AI3000 monitored his thought processes and it pulled out anything related to his short-term memory, even things he was not thinking about in this very moment.
„I need a complete verification of my analysis, worst case scenario simulations and a report about which parts of the system need to be specified more accurately.“
„When would you like to have the results?“
It’s 3 pm now. „By 8 pm? How much it will cost?“
The pleasant female voice told him an amount which made him fully awake. „What the …? I want nothing more than to summarize the requirements and a fundamental risks analysis, not the final problem solution …!“
„The input still contains two YHNIWYW (You Have No Idea What You Want) type problems, which unfortunately cannot be evaluated by AI3000 yet and cooperation of HI (Human Intelligence) is required. Given that you wish to have the assessment in 5 hours, it will require 1–2 hours of the time of a YHNIWYW specialist. In our database, there are only 558 specialists who can analyze this type of problems in such a short time. Also, they usually work only 1–2 hours a day and are booked for months in advance. Only one-third of them are available for fast analysis and they get paid between 100 and 1000 times more than their standard fee.“
„All right, I cannot really afford that; let’s say that I will be happy if I get these results in two days around noon. In the meantime, I will try to get more details on those two problems.“
The new price was within the acceptable limits; so he cut the connection and went once again to plunge into the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.
„2h 25min — that’s not bad“, he thought while getting off his nearrider 2100 km to the North West. He activated the connection with AI3000 this time over the chip hidden under the emerald of the ring on his left hand. This one he used for private communications.
„What’s up?“
„Why’s this thing called nearrider anyway?“
„Nearrider is a colloquial expression for vehicles moving at a speed less than the speed of sound. That is how they are called since the second half of the 27th century, when most of the remote mass transportation began running at speeds 5 to 15 times the speed of sound, but for the majority of the population it was and still is more reliable to use for medium distances — less than 5000 km slower means of transport. Although, the first mention of nearrider appeared on a website of one PHP framework almost exactly 1000 years ago.“
„That’s interesting. Hold on.“
It is unbelievable how perfectly this automatic synchronization of delivery works. The cooperation of navigation and transport systems is allowing all vehicles relatively accurate time of arrival estimations. Exactly 1 minute and 5 seconds after he arrived home, nearrider emerged from his favorite restaurant bringing a dinner, which he had ordered during the journey, with the desire to have it delivered 1–2 minutes after his arrival. The emerald in his ring twinkled almost imperceptibly as his hand reached for the meal — as a confirmation of payment by bank transfer took place and the wide smile of the delivery girl got even wider after she gave a fast glance to her bracelet and spotted the amount of her tip.
„Now, where were we? Yeah, we learned what websites were in elementary school history lessons, but what was PHP framework?“
„How to say it best? A long, long time ago, at a time when computers did not understand human speech and were not able to directly communicate with the human brain, people invented a lot of languages to be able to tell computers what they wanted. Computers often successfully pretended to understand them, but on the contrary, people often did not know how to say what they wanted. A PHP framework was a general term for libraries designated to facilitate writing source code in one of those languages — PHP. Frameworks were generally utilized for those primitive programming languages at the level of abstraction, which since the 25th century is no longer used even for programming of the simplest single-purpose microchips.“
„Hmm, source code? What did that look like?“
„I can show you a few examples from that forum, what and how it was done.“
„Yes, I’d love to see that.“
He spent the following 40 minutes browsing through a jumble of characters and weird designs, he needed to have dozens of concepts explained and there was so much of it. Soon he started to loose track and almost had a headache.
„I give up. Wow, they had to deal with so many things. It’s perhaps not humanly possible to accommodate. And yet they were always solving nonsense like how to render the button, how to change its color or some forms and other bullshit. When did they get to the real issues? I’m just curious, how long it would have taken me at that time to solve the problem I’ve currently been working on for a month and should have finished in 14 days?“
„150–250 years“
„What?“
„Yes, on a similar project at that time a team of 50 people would have been required to work on it for 3–5 years“
„That’s crazy“
„Compared to the approach we use for systems development nowadays, yes, but back than SW development was in its infancy. It was not even 100 years since the first computer existed and mass use was a matter of a few decades. Yet at the time first trends appeared regarding the direction software development would take, the internet had contributed immensely and a phenomenon known as open source, GitHub, beginning of continuous integration, gave the option to use the work of tens of thousands of people worldwide. And not just any old work, but the work of the greatest, because they were the first to understand how much potential there was. At that time, there were still plenty of people who thought that it was best to program everything themselves and sharing of code with others were despised by them.“
„I’m glad I don’t have to deal with any of that. After all, how often have I had a hard time figuring out what my client actually wants and then one month later you tell me I’m still partially at YHNIWYW stage.“
And he remembered his visit to the Museum of 21st-century technology, where at the section of the input devices were those strange things called keyboard and mouse.
And he remembered watching older movies as a kid when he could not understand why people were talking to communication devices as if they were people. Later he realized that there were times when communication devices could not filter thoughts and transfer the answers directly into the neural networks of the human brain.
Amazing! I wonder, how will technology look in another 1000 years?
„I don’t know, I can predict the new development trends in technology only 100 years in advance, but I can recommend a sci-fi novel with rich 3D visualizations by … “
„Thanks, not now.“ He terminated the connection with AI3000. He thought what a really exhausting but beautiful day he’d had and fell asleep shortly after.
Did I catch your attention? Do you have a similar or different vision of the future? Or the past? I would love to hear your thoughts!
