What do we use Computer Programs for?

There isn’t much of a distinction between our reliance on computer programs and our reliance on computers themselves. Programs are the instructions with which a computer runs, and without them you wouldn’t have computing. There is an argument for whether we have gone down a path with programming in which we’ve chosen a ‘language’ that isn’t as efficient that it could be, but the amount of ways we can use the programs we have are staggering.

Have you thought of how money transactions are carried out these days? You may think that there is still something to be said for physical money, but regardless of your aesthetic notions you’ll find that any transaction you make in the UK today will come into contact with a computer program somewhere down the line. Business depends on it and because of the immediate nature of transactions, business benefits from it too.

Electronic communications these days are all interfaced through computers at some level. Programs are what allow us to run all of the complex tasks that a mobile phone performs, whether that’s the seemingly simple act of a letter appearing on the screen when you’re texting, or the mysterious world of what happens after you press send. The internet itself is all programs: a network of networks, all of which are themselves a complex web of codes.

We use computers to protect us. Computer programs can assess data at a rate than pen and pencil simply can’t, and aren’t subject to inattention in the same way as a human mind. We use them to monitor the integral safety of complex systems, predict the weather and coordinate networks where failure in any degree can be fatal, such as the flow of air traffic at an airport.

As such it’s hard to understand why people would have anything against reliance on computer programs. They perform functions in our society that can’t be substituted with anything else, and allow us to achieve things that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Criticism seems to be based on unfounded fears, such as ‘what if’ scenarios in which all computer systems are lost. If that happened the cause would have to be so cataclysmic as to make the lack of computers the least of our worries.

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• pc article database 2011