quote:
Originally posted by flap:
Why would their being machines qualify them as better software engineers?
The answer to this question lies in economical aspects, as well as physical differences between machines and humans and intelligence advantages of the former.
For one thing, an average human being has a life expectancy of 78 years, 5 of which are spent playing with toys, 12 of which are spent in grade school, and 8 more years in University (numbers may vary with the school system), which gives us a total of 25 years of formation, and 13+ more years in retirement, if we assume that the person retires at 65. This gives the human software engineer an effective work period of only 40 years. A fact that must also be taken in consideration is that humans need to sleep 8 hours per day, which is about a third of a whole day. So the total work period is only of 27 years. And since humans don't work 2 days out of seven, multiplying 5/7 per 27 gives about 20 years of work.
While for now, machines may not last as long as humans years, though they may last much longer in 50 years, they cost much less in maintenance and training costs than human beings. Training costs of human engineers are high, whether for the student or the state that sponsors his studies; whereas a machine has a zero training cost, assuming that the software of the machine is included in its assembly costs. Furthermore, the success of the training of the human engineer is not garanteed, and the failure rate is generally high, therefore resulting in a scant number of software engineers. On the other hand, since machines are all assembled by machines themselves, and all equal, a much higher number of robot engineers is obtained than human engineers, and the cost of defect robots is much lower than that of human rejects. Another important fact to consider is that there is no cost related to machine retirement: the obselete machines are simply recycled into other machines, and there is no need for maintaing machines, because they do not need or care about resting before dying.
Furthermore, the energy source of machines is more practical and steady than that of living beings. Humans depend on a food and sleep in order to survive, and must regularly interrupt their activities to nourrish, whereas machines can run on a constant source of energy. Humans are also more polluting than machines, as they emit carbon dioxide, whereas machines that feed on hydroelectrical energy do not emit any pollution. Machines are also much more robust than humans, making them more resistant to accidents and untimely demises, as well as fatigue.
It is a well known fact that computers have much more processing power than humans. While it is true that developping the necessary artificial intelligence to allow computers to program themselves will take a long time, the raw processing power of a computer allied with such a possibility would make computers infinitely more powerful software engineers than human beings. Also, since a computer is automated, and cannot make trivial mistakes such as 2 + 2 = 5, they would be likely to write much fewer bugs than human engineers.
In conclusion, the longevity, the robustness, the lower costs and the higher processing power could potentially make machines much better software engineers than human beings. This is why the human species must work on improving their reliaility and their longevity, by concentrating scientific research in genetics, or it will be a matter of time before humans become obselete in less than half a century from now. Those matters must be taken seriously, or the HBOS (Human Brain Operating System) may become another loved but extinct technology like the Amiga or BeOS.
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A research brought to you by way too much time on my hands.
