If computers and phones and other electronics are programmed to follow codes and don’t have a conscious to think freely. How do they end up crashing and what causes them to do a task they’ve done hundreds of times before, wrong?
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If you told a computer to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you’d need to give it *very specific* commands. We aren’t just talking about “get bread, put peanut butter on it, put jelly on it, put more bread on top”. You’d need to be a lot more specific than that.
1 — Open pantry door by gripping brass knob, rotate 60 degrees, apply force to pull back door.
2 — Retrieve loaf of bread from third shelf from top. Carry to cabinet and set down. Remove twist tie. Set twist tie aside.
3 — Open front end of plastic bag, remove next two pieces of bread after disregarding heel. Close front end of plastic bag, reapply twist tie.
4 — Return to pantry. Retrieve jar of peanut butter. Carry to cabinet and set down. Twist top end of jar and rotate to remove.
And so on, until you have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Maybe you even include an instruction to cut off the crusts.
*However*… sometimes programmers don’t fully think everything through. Let’s say you run the above program a thousand times. Did you include a subroutine that gets more bread once you’ve run out? Or more peanut butter? Even programs that seem to work fine can crash if there’s some extra factor that might come up, but usually doesn’t. Did you remember to include an instruction for the computer if there are no clean knives in the drawer to spread the peanut butter? Okay good, you did. Good job.
But what are you doing with all those crusts you cut off? Did you remember to tell the computer to throw them away? I bet you didn’t. So if you make a thousand sandwiches, how long does it take until the cut off crusts have accumulated on the kitchen cabinet to the point where it is overflowing, and you can’t find a place to make the sandwich? What happens then?
A crash happens, that’s what. There was some little thing that the programmer didn’t even consider for a second. Some variable that works fine the first 500 times you run it, and will reset once you turn off the computer. But did you think about the fact that other programs might be running at the same time, and they might be using the kitchen cabinet as well?
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