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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>Fear of software</title>
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<h3 class="head">Fear of software</h3>
<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:15px;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";'><span style='font-size: 16px; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;'>May 2020</span></p>
<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:15px;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";'><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style='line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;'>Most people are familiar with the concept of a black box. A black box is a tool or instrument that serves a certain purpose. We might not know what is inside of it and, quite frankly, most of the time we do not care. What we care about is that after giving “A” to black box it does something and produces “B” (or “A+”, whatever). </span></span></p>
<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:15px;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";'><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style='line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;'>The phenomenon when an object produces certain results and we do not necessarily know or care how they are produced is called abstraction. We live in a world of layered abstractions. In the real world, abstractions caused specialization or division of labor. Humanity progressed a tremendous amount by specializing because every layer of abstraction kept becoming better and more sophisticated. </span></span></p>
<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:15px;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";'><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style='line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;'>In the physical world, we can reasonably picture the layers in our heads. If you are asked to break down a car you would probably think of a body, wheels, rims, seats, steering wheel, engine, sensors, windows, etc. This is obviously an oversimplified example but the order of magnitude is still imaginable after you add another thousand or more parts that I missed. </span></span></p>
<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:15px;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";'><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style='line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;'>Now, let’s take another example – you wake up and “check your Instagram”. It sounds much more innocent than breaking down a car into components, doesn’t it? Well, it is not. The depth of the abstraction tree here is so phenomenal and most of the people are not aware of that. And that depth keeps growing at astounding levels day by day. I am not claiming that I understand it all but I am not sure if it is fine that the majority of the people are not aware of the sophistication behind the software. They first said that software is eating the world. Now they say that design is eating software. Regardless, humans are not the ones eating here. </span></span></p>
<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:15px;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";'><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style='line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;'>Having said all that, these philosophical thoughts did not stop me from switching careers towards software engineering. Why? Because it is intellectually challenging and it pays well. </span></span></p>
<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:115%;font-size:15px;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";'><span style='font-size: 16px; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;'> </span></p>
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