Star Trek Systems

Gee, they have some cool software in the 24th century. Ignoring the obvious products of many generations of hardware improvements, the reliability, diagnostics, flexibility and interoperability of these systems is nothing short of astounding to us. Oh, the poor 24th century engineer is lumbered with a whole lot of high-falutin' jargon, but just look at how he/she can satisfy CaptainHornHair day in and day out for years - he/she knows something we don't!

Speculation invited on just what that is.

OTH, they seem to have forgotten what a fuse is for. Guess that mid-21st century collapse is to blame for that

According to my copy of the Star Ship Enterprise manual they started working on the software before they started on the hardware for the star ship. Having a sane schedule is a hefty part of the apparent miracle of programs that work except when the plot calls for problems.

Whereas clearly they didn't spend nearly enough time on the hardware, given its canonical habit of exploding every time something goes wrong, somewhere.

Still, I'd wager PlasmaToTheFace encourages the engineers to debug effectively. Application to modern development practice, anyone?

No, engineers don't actually use those systems in risky situations and simply say, "Space is dangerous, bold boy. Get over it".

I'm always amused by the references to programming, which inevitably lead to a discussion of subroutines. Poor Data, whose "grammar subroutines" couldn't be changed to let him say contractions...

Except he can use the contractions built into French. Maybe he "thinks in English", so that's special... --PCP

Apparently, this OO fad will fade by the 24th century as it is a conspicuous omission in talk sprinkled with buzzwords like "heuristics" and "neural net". It's also interesting to note that everybody is a programmer!

Actually, I think it is pretty likely that this OO fad will fade away by the 24th century.

Note that in the 20th century, everyone became a telephone operator. Yes, the automation of telephone switching, with the introduction of the dial telephone solved the crisis of an exponentially increasing need for telephone operators by --- making everyone a telephone operator. So it's not surprising to think that everyone in the 24th century would be a programmer; it should be a goal for us to achieve within the next 20 years. -- JeffGrigg

Disagree, Jeff. I think you're making an unwarranted leap. Telephone operators are not telephone engineers. Operators helped users use the phone, which eventually became less necessary. The correct idea is that everyone becomes a computer user, which is already happening today. --AnonymousCoward

I advocate making it sooner than 20 years in my BetterSyntacticSugar discussion, which should probably be retitled to WhyOneIsntQualifiedToHaveAnOpinionAboutCee? based on the most frequent type of comments I've received. --

Isn't that what SmalltalkLanguage was originally supposed to be all about? - JayOsako

Management techniques improved considerably in the Next Generation. When Kirk stepped off the ship things devolved to utter chaos until he came back to set things right; Picard is a modern "empowering" manager who can afford to take a vacation and leave his people in charge.

I love that line, "make it so".

The computers are nice, but I'm more impressed with the telecommunications systems. Just flip your communicator open or tap your badge, say a name, and you get an instantaneous answer. Video, audio, and data formats are compatible throughout the universe. And no one ever gets re-directed to voice mail. --KrisJohnson

Even more amazing is that when the person making the call says the recipient's name, the system is able to route the call and allow the recipient to hear her name, all at the same time. It apparently knows where to route the call before the caller makes it! (Must be that newfangled faster-than-light chip from Intel.)

Poor Ensign Brijj....

Apparently the ship's doors work on the same system -- they open when the character wants to go through them, but never when the script calls for a few more lines, or a dramatic pause.

Unbelievable that no one has made/franchised a working mobile phone yet that looks and feels exactly like Kirk's communicator (ratchets open with the flip of the wrist, makes beep sound as you do so, gold mesh case). Yes there are many flip phones but just not the same. The fad would probably dissipate quickly, but how cool would it be to try a working communicator? A tricorder as PDA probably wouldn't be much fun, but the communicator design was perfect!

Discussion of StarTrek human-computer interface moved to StarTrekUserInterface

It would be nice if 21-st century job sites had something like a JeffriesTube, rather than the cramped closets that usually hold computers and network equipment.

See WarpDrive, CaptainHornHair

CategoryScienceFiction