Oldest Program Ofa System

"I would like to give wings once again to our slow physics."

This new page has been created to discuss the old ideas in the OldestProgramOfaSystem, a thesis written (probably) by GeorgWilhelmFriedrichHegel.

The full english translation can be found here:

http://appropriatesoftware.net/wiki?OldestProgramOfASystem

-- JohnBywater

Prologue

It has been said that the future is the vision at the base of today's technology development. What does this vision look like? As we all experience desires, including the moral desire to DoTheRightThing, and given that our actions (I'm an engineer) change (and sometimes reconstitute) TheWorld?, I expect many people are sometimes interested in Hegel's question: "How does a world have to be created to suit a moral being?"

This idea would seem to have a place near the top of the InformalHistoryOfProgrammingIdeas, because it is an old idea about programming (building a system) which still seems to run through current thinking, such as CodeUnitTestFirst, and can shed some light on statements such as TheSourceCodeIsTheDesign [See Note 1].

This seems nutritious because programming often seems to be about building a SystemOfMachinery?, without first (in the CodeUnitTestFirst sense) building a SystemOfIdeas?, such that TheMachineSignifiesTheIdea?. This can result in HasteNotSpeed?, and is ameliorated by ideas such as SystemMetaphor.

SeparateIntentionFromRealisation? now presents itself as imperative!

The Machine Is Not The Idea

"I want to show that there is no idea of the state, because the state is something mechanical, just like there is no idea of a machine. Only that which is an object of freedom is called idea. Therefore we also have to transcend the state! For every state must treat free human beings like mechanical cogwheels; and it should not; therefore it has to cease to exist."

A Mythology Of Reason

"First I will here speak of an idea, which, as far as I know, has not occurred to anyone - we must have a new mythology, but this mythology has to serve ideas, it has to become a mythology of reason."

(this page will allow UnitTestedSystemAsMythologicalSystem to be refactored)

NOTES:

There are those of us who strongly disagree with the assumptions in TheSourceCodeIsTheDesign and consider any discussion based on those arguments to be false, a form of StolenConceptFallacy.

CategoryPhilosophy