@nightpool@cybre.space be it to the hardware directly or to the software intermediaries that go between us and the hardware, we are communicating to a computer what we want it to do. communication with other humans about what we want the computer to do is equally important but i would hesitate to call it primary
@typhlosion @nightpool I didn't see it (typing our toots about the same time?) but the point still stands.
You are not communicating to a computer what you want to do when you write C. You are communicating to yourself what you want the compiler to translate into instructions for the computer.
Absent the compiler (which is not the computer, but another expression of human want-to-do), the C source file has zero communicative value to the computer.
@beadsland @nightpool@cybre.space "absent the compiler", you're just writing text into a document when you're writing code, so yeah, i guess i agree that in that strange vacuum you've constructed the primary utility of code is communication with other humans
@typhlosion @nightpool Computing is definitely a strange vacuum, but not unprecedented.
Consider the analogous case of building construction. An architect draws up plans that communicate the structural features of a building, but those plans take too may shortcuts to instruct a crew responsible for assembling that building.
Instead, those plans are translated, at multiple points, to communicate to various stakeholders and gatekeepers and suppliers and contractors as needed for comprehension.
@beadsland @nightpool@cybre.space just because the workers can't directly use the original plans doesn't mean the goal of the plans isn't for the house to be built
@beadsland @nightpool@cybre.space you're still communicating to the computer what you want to happen! even if there's indirection involved! if im at a restaurant in barcelona with an english to german translator, a german to polish translator, a polish to mandarin translator, and a mandarin to spanish translator, my intent is still to get some fucking soup eventually
@typhlosion @nightpool Ah, but here is where the word "translation" fails. Go through multiple stages of human translation, hopefully the chef at the other end prepares some soup.
But the goal to get a list of addresses sorted is never communicated to a computer. It never makes your bowl of soup. It assembles bytes into an order that you interpret as soup, but it never does anything involving soup or lists of addresses or whatever.
Per your follow-up toot, mutually stepping away at this point.
@beadsland @nightpool@cybre.space i genuinely can't follow your logic at all at this point and i'm getting agitated so i need to step away