And believe me when I say this, it is a pile of muck - the applications and the facilities that you and I take for granted. Underneath the glam and the fanfare of the user interface, it is just an intricate and festering aggregation of despair over bad relationships or the frustration over shattered dreams. We software engineers like to call this 'C.O.D.E', and right about now, the world runs on it. Lest I forget, we disguise our inadequacies by giving it a fancy name called 'B.U.G'.
Well, a bug isn't that fancy a name too. Nope, not at all. Let me go etymological for just a minute.
Do you know what this is? This is just one of the first moths that got stuck between the relays of the Harward Mark II in 1945, and naturally, crashed the legacy system. This 'bug' menace was so terrible at times, that they employed a full time bug find-fixer to keep the computer up and running. The birth of a software engineer. We've come a long way since, haven't we? Nowadays, bugs don't discolour relays, they cost you millions of dollars in lawsuits...
Anyhoo, I have been noticing over the days that computer programming still commands a certain amount of romanticising in people's heads. When I say 'programmer', the first thought that comes to your head is the skinny, nerdy, rim spectacled, T-shirt sporting kid who is called in times of national emergencies like when an evil organization has taken over the entire defense network. That's when our nero (nerd hero, in short) white-hacks into governement defense database, forces entry into the crime lord's virtual lair by breaking an RSA encryption algorithm(only on his third attempt, mind you), all the while ridiculing the balding governmental servants on their lack of techie know-how and playing Gears of War with his right hand on his PSP at the same time.
Now, substitute this image with an ordinary Joe, just like you, except this time, with a paunch, a short sight, a bandaged wrist due to RSI, IQ probably less than yours, an aspiring manager who chaffs under managerial pressures, a lazy shirker with a 'devil-may-care-coz-I'm-leaving-this-job-anyway-lolz' attitude.
So, the next time you go to an ATM to withdraw money, and hard cash is not so forthcoming, don't blame the system. Don't blame technology. The machine is fine. It thinks faster than you need it to. It don't make mistakes. It's the 'Viveks' behind the machine, who have performed an erroneous 'defensive bug fix' for another excuse for a program logic made by another incompetent 'Vivek'.
Mind you, we are not so callous about other things, like say, planning our vacations. No Sir! It's just that we don't really worry if our buggy health insurance software results in someone's death due to lack of treatment halfway around the world all because this someone's record got accidentally terminated in the database. Welcome to the Brave New Dehumanized World.
Now, since I know how the process works, I'm a little more forgiving to mistakes. So, I wait patiently in the supermarket billing line as the billing computer 'hangs' while processing a 15 item inventory. But I do attach a certain value to some positions and places. I am not a Mac fanatic. I am not a penguin supporting Linux groupie. I'm a fan of the erstwhile richest man in the world Bill Gates and I tend to think that a job at Microsoft is a coveted post and you better hang on to it, missy!
So, the other day, I switched on my computer and I was greeted by the following screen.
I had seen these funny error messages in email forwards and guffawed while mentally thanking those jobless, creative geeks who came up with such incredibly stupid error screen popups out of the blue. After a good 10 seconds of staring at the screen while reading the forward, I used to get to back to my work of staring at the screen, but this time with a more weary demeanour. Never in my life could I have thought that I would get to see a message like this in earnest from my own computer! Those geeks weren't creative at all, they had just been silent sufferers!
I could see the chain of events in my head as the code that had caused this screen was being assembled. One man's program results in the last step throwing the error 'No Keyboard present'. Another guy's program throws a friendly suggestion 'Press F1 to continue'. A third smartass at Microsoft combines these two codes and presents it to Uncle Bill as a finished product worth thousands of Rupees. So, my whole writeup is a culmination of the deliberations of these Three Wise Men.
I kept looking at the monitor and almost felt like it was daring me. My computer was telling me, "Look, I'm telling you the keyboard ain't present. I don't lie. I'm a fucking machine. But hey, if you think you're better than me, then by all means, go ahead and press that F1 button. See what happens. Sate your curiosity. Just try. Yup. Go ahead. Uh. Ah. Uh. Oh, dear metal gods! (The line between a headbanging Slayer fan and your console are thinner than you imagine...). I was wrong all this time! The keyboard was present, you sneaky you! There. You did it. You overcame your worst fear. You are better than a computer. I am just a machine. I am your tool. I drudge for you alone. My (literally) undying service to you, supreme master. Eat shit."
Yes. The computer said 'Welcome' to me once I pressed F1. I checked my mail and slept like a baby that night.
Oh, by the way, just to prove that the world is full of retards, here's something for you to ponder over.
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