Just that the Analytical Engine she'd have had to debug was all gears and levers and cranks and linkages and shit. One wrong move and it'll take off a finger, or a hand, or more.
In hindsight, if modern computers were like this, probably users would be different, too...
I realize you jest, but I bet she did actually debug them by running through them by hand. I've found and fixed many bugs via code review without actually running into the bug during a run. Plus wtf else was there to do in the 1800s? Debugging might have been relatively highly entertaining in those days.
I'm sure she did. I've also heard that when computers could run her code existed someone tried to run her programs and found several simple bugs that had not been seen before even though they are obvious. (I don't know how to verify that claim but it wouldn't surprise me)
I always assumed they were asking if it was rigged.
Like, i can write function sum(a, b) that always returns 10, and impress people how it's correct when I pass in 1,9 and 2,8 and 3,7. But if I pass in 7,7 it'll still return the "right" answer of 10, because it's rigged and not actually doing math.
That's a good point, but a few decades of talking to clients has led to a number of conversations like this where they want it to "just work", even if they've input the wrong information.
There was a thread on Reddit where people likewise noted that having another person try problematic software solved the issue. So one commenter regaled how a dude sidestepped the whole rigmarole by saying to his colleague “look, this thing's broken again”, and then before the other guy could step in, he clicked the thing himself, and it worked.
Sometimes I wonder if people really do affect their environment with their thoughts and attitudes and maybe people who believe in ghosts but don't believe in technology can see ghosts and have their tech fail in unexplainable ways, but the presence of someone who understands and believes in it changes the way it works and doesn't see paranormal shit because they don't believe in it.
Like my ex believed in paranormal stuff and apparently experienced some herself and also had her tech stuff fail spectacularly in ways I couldn't replicate if I tried but would otherwise work fine for me.
Though I do have a feeling that if their activity on the PC was recorded, it would actually turn out to be just them lying about (or not even knowing) what they did and the behavior of the tech being as logical as usual, given their actions. Or they just ran into a rare race condition and the correct actions fail like 0.3% of the time.
But it would be more interesting if it was the other thing.
I've started defaulting to just saying "yes" with my family and pretending to fix it. I'm actually thankful for the laptop revolution, cause I can just say "it's fucked, buy a new one."
I have like a dozen old laptops with various flavors of Linux on them because of this. Can't give them away cause apparently Linux is a scary word in this part of the country.
My first pass at ot was a simple grab closest neighbor solution, but that left a slightly unoptimal path and my boss asked me to "fix" it. I explained to him why, no, I can't make it both fast amd accurate, pick one, while also showing him that wikipedia page. I was so mad when he said just make it more accurate ignoring now it takes hours to run sometimes only to save 10 seconds of a machine moving.
This is how I expect AI to work. I will silently think of a thing, and the AI must make it perfectly in one go. If it doesn't, I have just lacked in describing in detail what it should do. And that takes thousands of lines of code.
Alternatively, people could genuinely believe the primitive computer is a "thinking machine". So if you fat-finger an input, will the machine know you made a mistake and intuitively correct you? Not unlike asking "Hey, I've got ten days of vacation, can I take two weeks off?" And your coworker - knowing a week is seven days, but you're only referring to business days - responds "Yes".
No, they were literally asking if the machine was able to return the right result if the person didn't enter it ccorrectly. You know, like how some people expect search engines and AI to give them the answer they want even if they use the wrong words.
Yes, except in the case of Babbage's machine they were asking if putting 1235 instead of 1234 would give the same answer.
Search engines work that way because of having large large datasets and pattern recognition that can suggest based on typos. Calculators don't do that.
Yeah but calculator back then was a profession. So if suddenly a machine can replace a complete profession it's at least conprehensible to assume it can do more than it actually can. It's basically the same with AI right now. There is this "overshoot" of what is expected from a new paradigm shifting technology. Similar to how people 100 years ago thought there will be flying cars by now.
It is possible that the question was intended to be about human error checking prior to starting the process of calculating, like noticing a lack of a decimal on a monetary number in a data set, and Babbage misunderstood. That would be a valid question, but isn't how the quote is phrased.
I've seen a couple papers on theoretical designs for purely mechanical computers that can run doom, but as far as I am aware I've never heard of one that's actually been built.
given how mechanical it was, it likely wouldn't be hard to colour some of the memory gears and make it so they are visible from the outside turning it into a display.
This I do not know. However the first widely reported railway fatality in the UK (possibly the world) was MP William Huskisson who was run over by Stevenson Rocket...
Not relevant to the conversation but I think it's interesting.
Ah yes, I remember being in the store when Charles Babbage himself would brag about his high score in Asteroids. Or that time he gave me a copy of the Doom shareware on 3.5" floppy. /s
"The Difference Engine" Fifty years ago, Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage gave the British empire the first working computer. Since that time, life has changed vastly in some areas, but remained the same in others. Great novel.
Being extremely, extremely generous, maybe they meant a human would notice the input was incorrect? But even then, a human could notice the same when inputting it into a computer.
Not exactly. An autocorrect is a closest-match or prediction device with correct input given beforehand. When you type "fridsy", what it does is to answer the question "between fridsy and this set of words, what is the shortest distance?"
But to the user, it can correct their inputs. The rest is an abstraction. My point is that there’s more to a platform than just precise calculations. Obviously the asker isn’t thinking this far ahead, but Babbage is also rather flippant in his response.
Isn’t this just dependent on the level of abstraction? At the low level a CPU is just a calculator.
Presumably the user has a way to enter these digits. If they’re using a touchscreen, then there’s plenty of algorithms being used to make sure the intended touch target is triggered, even if they touch something in between.
There’s a lot of effort into making sure the user gets the intended result even if their input is fuzzy.
86 Comments
ieatpwns@lemmy.world · 148 pts · 280d
Ada Lovelace invented coding on that thing btw
bluGill@fedia.io · 168 pts · 280d
And then had the wisdom to die before a computer capable of running her programs was invented, thus saving the bother of having to debug them.
notabot@piefed.social · 50 pts · 279d
Writes code.
Realises that debugging code that was written by the lunatic that is yourself two nights ago is going to be a big part of her life.
dies
We've all had debugging sessions where that feels like the best option. Right?
ieatpwns@lemmy.world · 32 pts · 280d
I wouldnt have done anything different
Deceptichum@quokk.au · 21 pts · 279d
trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 279d
Just that the Analytical Engine she'd have had to debug was all gears and levers and cranks and linkages and shit. One wrong move and it'll take off a finger, or a hand, or more.
In hindsight, if modern computers were like this, probably users would be different, too...
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 278d
I realize you jest, but I bet she did actually debug them by running through them by hand. I've found and fixed many bugs via code review without actually running into the bug during a run. Plus wtf else was there to do in the 1800s? Debugging might have been relatively highly entertaining in those days.
bluGill@fedia.io · 5 pts · 278d
I'm sure she did. I've also heard that when computers could run her code existed someone tried to run her programs and found several simple bugs that had not been seen before even though they are obvious. (I don't know how to verify that claim but it wouldn't surprise me)
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network · 92 pts · 280d
I always assumed they were asking if it was rigged.
Like, i can write function sum(a, b) that always returns 10, and impress people how it's correct when I pass in 1,9 and 2,8 and 3,7. But if I pass in 7,7 it'll still return the "right" answer of 10, because it's rigged and not actually doing math.
Deebster@programming.dev · 126 pts · 280d
That's a good point, but a few decades of talking to clients has led to a number of conversations like this where they want it to "just work", even if they've input the wrong information.
Sc00ter@lemmy.zip · 56 pts · 279d
Clients? Shit happens in my house.
"My monitor keeps turning off."
"Ok next time it happens ill look at it and see if i can figure out what is going on."
"Cant you just fix it?"
"Fix what? I dont know whats wrong yet."
"Just fix the monitor."
socsa@piefed.social · 29 pts · 279d
Legitimately, about 1/3 of the time my mere presence seems to magically fix the issue.
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 279d
There was a thread on Reddit where people likewise noted that having another person try problematic software solved the issue. So one commenter regaled how a dude sidestepped the whole rigmarole by saying to his colleague “look, this thing's broken again”, and then before the other guy could step in, he clicked the thing himself, and it worked.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 279d
i really should have gone into IT because electronics spontaneously break around me
TRBoom@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 279d
Same, I keep track of magic on a white board in my office
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 278d
Sometimes I wonder if people really do affect their environment with their thoughts and attitudes and maybe people who believe in ghosts but don't believe in technology can see ghosts and have their tech fail in unexplainable ways, but the presence of someone who understands and believes in it changes the way it works and doesn't see paranormal shit because they don't believe in it.
Like my ex believed in paranormal stuff and apparently experienced some herself and also had her tech stuff fail spectacularly in ways I couldn't replicate if I tried but would otherwise work fine for me.
Though I do have a feeling that if their activity on the PC was recorded, it would actually turn out to be just them lying about (or not even knowing) what they did and the behavior of the tech being as logical as usual, given their actions. Or they just ran into a rare race condition and the correct actions fail like 0.3% of the time.
But it would be more interesting if it was the other thing.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 11 pts · 279d
I've started defaulting to just saying "yes" with my family and pretending to fix it. I'm actually thankful for the laptop revolution, cause I can just say "it's fucked, buy a new one."
Brickhead92@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 279d
Once you've got the new one, I'll take your old one and dispose of it appropriately...
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 8 pts · 279d
I have like a dozen old laptops with various flavors of Linux on them because of this. Can't give them away cause apparently Linux is a scary word in this part of the country.
grue@lemmy.world · 30 pts · 279d
Ah, you must be an expert
drcobaltjedi@programming.dev · 33 pts · 279d
One time my boss asked me to basically solve the Travelling salesman problem.
My first pass at ot was a simple grab closest neighbor solution, but that left a slightly unoptimal path and my boss asked me to "fix" it. I explained to him why, no, I can't make it both fast amd accurate, pick one, while also showing him that wikipedia page. I was so mad when he said just make it more accurate ignoring now it takes hours to run sometimes only to save 10 seconds of a machine moving.
tomiant@programming.dev · 3 pts · 279d
This is how I expect AI to work. I will silently think of a thing, and the AI must make it perfectly in one go. If it doesn't, I have just lacked in describing in detail what it should do. And that takes thousands of lines of code.
aev_software@programming.dev · 3 pts · 279d
magic
(Sprinkles of fairy dust)
trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works · 42 pts · 280d
That's a valid assumption one can only make without knowing the malevolent stupidity of typical computer users.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 280d
Alternatively, people could genuinely believe the primitive computer is a "thinking machine". So if you fat-finger an input, will the machine know you made a mistake and intuitively correct you? Not unlike asking "Hey, I've got ten days of vacation, can I take two weeks off?" And your coworker - knowing a week is seven days, but you're only referring to business days - responds "Yes".
snooggums@piefed.world · 16 pts · 280d
No, they were literally asking if the machine was able to return the right result if the person didn't enter it ccorrectly. You know, like how some people expect search engines and AI to give them the answer they want even if they use the wrong words.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network · 14 pts · 280d
Oh like when you type "population of tenton" and it returns "Did you mean Trenton? That population is XYZ"
snooggums@piefed.world · 16 pts · 280d
Yes, except in the case of Babbage's machine they were asking if putting 1235 instead of 1234 would give the same answer.
Search engines work that way because of having large large datasets and pattern recognition that can suggest based on typos. Calculators don't do that.
saimen@feddit.org · 10 pts · 279d
Yeah but calculator back then was a profession. So if suddenly a machine can replace a complete profession it's at least conprehensible to assume it can do more than it actually can. It's basically the same with AI right now. There is this "overshoot" of what is expected from a new paradigm shifting technology. Similar to how people 100 years ago thought there will be flying cars by now.
snooggums@piefed.world · 7 pts · 279d
Helicopters are flying cars.
It is possible that the question was intended to be about human error checking prior to starting the process of calculating, like noticing a lack of a decimal on a monetary number in a data set, and Babbage misunderstood. That would be a valid question, but isn't how the quote is phrased.
saimen@feddit.org · 4 pts · 279d
Maybe the person asking went on inventing error handling
tyler@programming.dev · 7 pts · 280d
No I meant Teton.
tomiant@programming.dev · 4 pts · 279d
Big ones.
tomiant@programming.dev · 8 pts · 279d
"Can it ChatGPT?"
"No."
"Can ChatGPT?"
"No."
tomiant@programming.dev · 3 pts · 279d
"If I fuck up, will it correct it?"
"No."
"Will ChatGPT correct it?"
"Yes. Too much."
AcidiclyBasicGlitch@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 271d
Same, and I feel like this still applies pretty well to arguments about AI bias not being something anyone should be too concerned about.
whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 67 pts · 279d
That quote is my favorite example of a very polite wtf
Gerudo@lemmy.zip · 43 pts · 279d
So the I-d10t bug has been around since the beginning, it seems.
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml · 19 pts · 279d
I've also heard it referred to as PICNIC: Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.
P1nkman@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 279d
PEBKAC - Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair is another one.
banshee@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 279d
I'm a fan of CUI (Chair User Interface) problem
Brickhead92@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 279d
Layer-8 issue, even when it's DNS, it's a Layer-8 issue.
bhamlin@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 279d
Could be layer 9, management
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world · 36 pts · 280d
i.e. "I'm not smart enough, nor dumb enough, to understand how you arrived at such a stupid question."
ramble81@lemmy.zip · 31 pts · 279d
And thus the role of QA was born.
tomiant@programming.dev · 15 pts · 279d
All unit tests show PEBKAC
Potti@lemmy.world · 28 pts · 279d
Could it run Doom though?
Warl0k3@lemmy.world · 42 pts · 279d
I've seen a couple papers on theoretical designs for purely mechanical computers that can run doom, but as far as I am aware I've never heard of one that's actually been built.
but in theory yes it could have
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 279d
i want to play doom with a flipbook now
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 279d
it has limited memory but could me expanded, by a lot. but I'm theory yes, no display though.
FooBarrington@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 279d
Pff, who needs a display? Just do that Matrix thing and render the raw state in your head.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 14 pts · 279d
I didn't even see the code anymore. It's just; pinky, capro, barron.
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 279d
Person, woman, man, camera, tv.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 279d
given how mechanical it was, it likely wouldn't be hard to colour some of the memory gears and make it so they are visible from the outside turning it into a display.
Wilco@lemmy.zip · 16 pts · 279d
Confusion of ideas in, garbage out.
smileygav@lemmy.ml · 15 pts · 279d
Works on my machine
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 15 pts · 279d
Wasn't it a member of Parliament who asked him this? Or was that addition apocryphal?
trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 279d
No idea, but wouldn't be surprised at all.
Palerider@feddit.uk · 5 pts · 279d
This I do not know. However the first widely reported railway fatality in the UK (possibly the world) was MP William Huskisson who was run over by Stevenson Rocket...
Not relevant to the conversation but I think it's interesting.
DaMonsterKnees@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 280d
Old enough to remember Babbages video game store. I'd spend hours re-reading the descriptions on the back of every game box. Joy. Great share, thanks!
Deconceptualist@leminal.space · 6 pts · 279d
Ah yes, I remember being in the store when Charles Babbage himself would brag about his high score in Asteroids. Or that time he gave me a copy of the Doom shareware on 3.5" floppy. /s
DaMonsterKnees@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 279d
Don't you mean 5 and a quarter pence?
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 279d
The true floppy!
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net · 7 pts · 279d
8 inch disks were floppier.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 279d
Before my time, I had no clue they even existed until this comment. Love learning new things.
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net · 5 pts · 279d
Congratulations on being one of today's lucky 10,000!
Deconceptualist@leminal.space · 2 pts · 279d
True, but those were well out of style by the Doom era
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 269d
My doom was a handful of 3.5 diskettes
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 113d
thenextguy@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 280d
GIGO
Whelks_chance@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 279d
I've replied with just these letters to people before. Improved UX can only get you so far, before the ticket becomes "can you fix stupid?".
PEBCAK.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · 9 pts · 280d
[off topic?]
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-difference-engine-a-novel-william-gibson/0a5ffa44e0f3f9f1
"The Difference Engine" Fifty years ago, Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage gave the British empire the first working computer. Since that time, life has changed vastly in some areas, but remained the same in others. Great novel.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 9 pts · 279d
Being extremely, extremely generous, maybe they meant a human would notice the input was incorrect? But even then, a human could notice the same when inputting it into a computer.
multifariace@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 278d
I remember when someone built one on Minecraft. Those were the best days of minecraft.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 113d
A mechanical computer?
multifariace@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 112d
A calculator.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 111d
Nowadays, they craft their own microarchitecture, to run Minecraft in Minecraft, on a redstone-mechanical display.
CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 279d
Isn’t the whole point of autocorrect to put the wrong input but still get the right output?
hayvan@feddit.nl · 11 pts · 279d
Not exactly. An autocorrect is a closest-match or prediction device with correct input given beforehand. When you type "fridsy", what it does is to answer the question "between fridsy and this set of words, what is the shortest distance?"
CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 279d
But to the user, it can correct their inputs. The rest is an abstraction. My point is that there’s more to a platform than just precise calculations. Obviously the asker isn’t thinking this far ahead, but Babbage is also rather flippant in his response.
Horsecook@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 279d
CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 279d
I mean, that’s a hyperbole. I think there’s more depth to this question from our point of view than just what’s on the surface.
Horsecook@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 279d
CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 279d
Isn’t this just dependent on the level of abstraction? At the low level a CPU is just a calculator.
Presumably the user has a way to enter these digits. If they’re using a touchscreen, then there’s plenty of algorithms being used to make sure the intended touch target is triggered, even if they touch something in between.
There’s a lot of effort into making sure the user gets the intended result even if their input is fuzzy.
Horsecook@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 279d
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 279d
Gotta get down on Fridsy.
frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io · 2 pts · 235d
AI Troglodyte: Of course the answer is yes! Money please!