I was going to post about much more serious things, but given the title of this blog, I couldn't resist sharing this map.
This seems like as good a time as any to describe the thought process behind the naming of my blog, so I'll do that too. The url is strongai.blogspot.com, as in Strong A.I. Look it up on wikipedia if you want to, but I guess, put simply, if you believe in Strong A.I., then you think that it's theoretically possible to build a machine that's conscious in the same way that humans are conscious. A lot of people are really uncomfortable with this concept--I certainly am--but I also don't see any way around it unless you introduce a vaguely religious sounding concept of higher consciousness that I instinctively mistrust. Anyway, that's my Armchair Philosopher take. But even though it's disconcerting to think of some computer essentially having feelings and being creative and basically being human in a way we think is unique to us, it's also pretty damn cool. And I want to help design that computer. Also, wouldn't it be cool if I was that computer? or if one of the thousands and thousands of blogs out there was actually written by him/her/it? So I kind of wanted the url iamarobot, but that was taken. so I took this instead.
and now onto the title. writing a "hello world" program is one of the first things you tend to do when you're learning a new programming language. I don't know how it became such a widespread practice, but it definitely is one. and it's so ingrained in me now that whenever I'm learning any new application, "hello, world." tends to be one of the first things I type. That's what happened here. exciting, no?
2 comments:
"Hello, world!" is a really underused. I think it is a most fabulous general greeting, and excellent way to start an email, your day, your new self-affirmation regime, etc. I especially like how often times saying, "hello world" is not the assignment but rather, "Hello, world!" is the correct sentence. I think the exclamation point really adds a sense of positivity and optimism, and in the cynical world of computer programming ("Will this damn program EVER compile???") it's nice to have a rare moment of happyness.
haha, I agree with you. It is a very optimistic phrase. Of course I took a class once where assignment #2 was making a function that printed "Goodbye cruel world..." which sort of negates all the optimism, but still made me smile. :)
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