Why aren’t computers programmed to understand that multiple clicks mean “prioritize this” instead of “open many iterations of this process”?
In: Technology
It can’t be done in general case. Imagine you are buying stuff on the internet, you’ve added an item to the shopping list and you want to purchase 10 of them. You press the + button nine times. If the browser interpreted those clicks as just manifestation of frustration, you would probably get more frustrated with the browser, because it didn’t do what you expected.
In some situations programmer might decide that excessive inputs should be discarded, but then they would have to figure out, which inputs are valid and which are not. That decision has to be made case by case and often it’s just simpler to just assume all input is valid.
Prioritization is a tricky thing. One way how to do it would be to give interactive part of the program higher priority. However, the process usually can’t tell the operating system that it must be done with higher priority. It could prioritize within itself, but it other processes are taking up the resources, tough luck.
TL;DR it’s easier to program that way.
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