Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

You would think by now that we would have straightened out all this mess with computers not quite working right. Sigh. Maybe one day.

Over 30 years ago, (yes, I am that old) I was loading software onto a computer via 5 1/4″ floppy disks (yes, I am that old) and… kaput. The software didn’t work.

“Ah,” said an older man looking on with disgust, “you are trying to run version 2.017 on version 1.89 and that doodad isn’t compatible with the thingabob. You need to reverse to last week’s version and match it with next month’s version and …”

On he went in derision. The computer wasn’t working right. The versions were backwards incompatible or some explanation that sounded more professional than doodad and thingabob. The result was the same.

Just this past week… The same thing. Load this, load that, twiddle this and that, hope it worked… it didn’t. The problems were on several different systems attempting to do wildly different things.

“Well,” I can hear someone chime in, “you should be using the triple-B system as that overcomes these incompatibilities and it has all been settled and … “

Yes, the triple-B system or whatever we have now is a bit better that this and that, but it too has its foibles when paired with something that is more than 32 hours old and…

You would think by now that we had this all worked out and some of this new AI stuff would patch it up or settle it down or move it just a little bit this way or that way like hanging a painting on a wall. Sigh.

Maybe one day these things will work. Still, on that day, someone will create something newer and wonderful-er that will not work with last week’s wonderfulness and we will have to…