Quote:
Originally Posted by zippy
One person knows Spanish (programmer) - and he speaks this to another person who knows Spanish and English (compiler). The Compiler converts the Spanish to English (1's and 0's) and gives this to the CPU - which doesn't natively know Spanish.
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The problem here is that he is having trouble separating the CPU from the compiler. To him, it's just "the computer." It seems
super obvious to those of us who have studied it but for the average person, the computer is just a magic box.
Here is the part of the conversation he appeared to be the most hung up on:
Me: "The compiler has to convert things from high-level code to binary so the CPU can execute it."
Him: "But if the computer does both the converting and the executing, why does it need to convert it? If the computer converts high-level code to binary code,
why can't we make a computer which understands high-level code?"*
I like 709 and chucker's analogy. Computers "think" in binary and have to "learn" programming languages, like a human thinks with electrical impulses and has to learn natural languages.
You can't make a CPU which understands high-level code for the same reasons why you can't make a baby which can speak English at birth. Babies learn, computers have software installed on them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Banana
One more thought. Could it be that your friend has mistakenly and unintentionally attributed some kind of intelligence or sentience to the computer? I remembered some people having the impression that the computer was "smart" when in reality it was just a cleverly designed program, in which case I would point out that computer is nothing but an automata carrying out orders mindlessly; it just seems creative only because it's reflective of the programmers behind it.
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I believe he has. I was trying to emphasize this isn't the case when I said that computers can only follow explicit instructions, but it didn't get the point across.
Unfortunately the electrical impulses analogy may cement the "computers are smart" misconception. Maybe not, though, since I could point out that while humans can learn things on their own, computers are helpless without software written and installed by humans.
*He then proceeded to tell me that there are
clearly billions to be had if I could devise such a CPU. I told him he should stick with philosophy
