Ummm.... WTF are you talking about? Spock? Geordi La Forge? Data? Hell Crusher. There was lots of programming. The lack of precision (or conversely, the presence of conversational interaction) has no predictive value. It's a freaking TV show.
We still need to be precise in what we want to get. Specification is still important. This AI slop that gets it close-ish but not right is not the same thing.
Yeah, they don't show programming for the same reason the computers talk aloud for everything - it makes for better television. It's not realistic that Picard shouts his access codes out every time he needs to open a locked door, that's a horrible security practice. Would you rather watch Geordi and Data sit there mashing keyboards or would you rather watch them swap little computer chips around or something? The latter is just a lot more visually interesting.
Even then, we often see them tapping away at panels doing god only knows what.
The alternative is bad graphical representations of programming. Like the VR episode of Community.
Idk Hollywood seems to love the idea of the computer cracker just banging away at the keyboard with an assload of fuckin SQL or JavaScript garbage right before “zoom and enhance” or some shit.
Yes. Natural languages are terrible for domains where precision matters. The use of specialized languages for precision predates even computers. I don’t see a world where that changes.
The number of domains where we used formal languages before computers were very small. Basically just math and science.
Programming languages are used far more broadly than that. They are used for business apps, social apps, entertainment etc.
If we follow your logic, we should expect the use of formal languages to shrink back to what it originally was for: math and science.
Just as you would express the "return policy" for a retail store in natural language, so also will you express the "return policy" for a website in natural language.
You leave out arguably the oldest and widest used domain specific language: law. While law is not fully formally specified, it is a highly restricted subset of natural language meant to create precise documents. It’s rooted in natural language but emphatically is not a natural language.
There's an entire profession dedicated towards interpreting law and as we have seen is corruptible and widely open to "personal interpretation", your argument is awful
So are we saying now that "lawyers" are "programmers"? Are Air Traffic Controllers programmers? ER doctors? Lots of disciplines have very specific language meant to reduce ambiguity. Are they all "programming"?
No. We are saying that natural languages need additional specification to be useful in precision situations. The point is that in all cases, the degree of required precision drives the formality of the language. The more precise you need to be, the more formal the language must be. Thus, there will always be a need for high precision, low ambiguity languages, akin to programming. Natural language can never fully replace programming.
The precise languages that we need either predate programming languages (law, math) or will be invented in the future.
*Programming languages* which are a very specific subset of "domain-specific languages", can go away, as past formal languages went away (e.g. roman numerals, Code of Hammurabi).
This is a category error. While Roman Numerals as a specific way of representing numeric values are not widely used, Arabic Numerals- which are the same class of entity- are. Similarly, the Code of Hammurabi represents a specific legal text, not a category of legal language. Your examples are more akin to saying, "Well, because nobody uses APL anymore, there will be no programming languages in the future."
I would also like to point out that all programming languages are a subset of mathematics, and the line between "programming language" and "mathematical expression" has been, and will always continue to be, blurry. At most, we could argue that programming languages are a deformalization of mathematics, and we could argue that we may see increasingly less formal programming languages over time; certainly, as the available memory and compute has expanded, the languages we use have grown more abstracted from the hardware. Though, as an interesting point, we've found that while abstracting the hardware is great for developer productivity, decreasing formality is at best a mixed blessing- defects crop up a great deal more in less formal languages and are harder to detect and correct. See how, for example, optional typing was added to Python or how TypeScript (a more formal language than JavaScript) has been taken up in web development.
All this is to say, you will never program a computer in a natural language. This has nothing to do with computers and everything to do with natural language. Further, it's worth noting, we don't generally have our users interact with computers using natural language either. There are limited use natural language interfaces out there, but at the end of the day- we provide buttons, text entry areas, and other UI elements because by constraining the interaction space, we make the usage of the system clear and comprehensible. And yes, a visual language remains a language.
On the flip side: programming languages are terrible for domains where you need to manipulate informal abstractions.
If you want to pick out all the dogs from cats, you're going to have a hard time writing a traditional program to do this, because you do not have the tools to build a formal definition of 'dog' or 'cat'. You'd likely need a neural network.
I think we will be using a combination of programming languages, natural language, and learn-by-example in the future.
Whatever they are doing it will still be called "programming". And the expressions will be called "programming languages".
Just as the very first programmers used coding sheets and switches on the front panel and the next generation used paper tape and assemblers so to will future programmers build on the abstractions of their predecessors.
There may be many layers of abstraction but somewhere down in the bowels of the computer the high level instructions get decomposed into codes that are executed by hardware.
It'll still be assignments, branching, loops and calls to libraries. Maybe massively parallel. Maybe "quantum" but still built out of sequences of instructions for machines.
Whatever they are doing it will still be called "programming".
I am dumbfounded that you think that a job title less than 80 years old is guaranteed to survive massive technological change over the next two centuries.
And the expressions will be called "programming languages".
...
There may be many layers of abstraction but somewhere down in the bowels of the computer the high level instructions get decomposed into codes that are executed by hardware.
It'll still be assignments, branching, loops and calls to libraries.
Are you saying that you think that if you ask ChatGPT to make you a chart you are "programming" because at some level it is doing "assignments, branching, loops and calls to libraries?"
And if the interfaces of the 24th century are even more abstract than ChatGPT (as they necessarily would need to be), are you saying that the people using them will still call themselves "programmers?"
I think you have some wild recency bias combined with "nothing ever changes."
In this field, everything changes, and yes, programming could be replaced with something else entirely unlike programming.
Supposing an AI tool eventually comes about that can take a vague request, question the user about precisely what they want and how it should behave and then reliably translate that into a programming and software engineering solution? Thats essentially what most people in Star Trek seem to mean by programming.
There seems to be an implicit split that happened once the tools became 'let the 4 year have unrestricted' levels of sophisticated where most people regard programming as the same thing as being prompted through constructing your request to the necessary precision and the much smaller group of people who actually design the tools, handle the high level architecture required for any of it to function, build the software too bespoke for the automatics to cope with.
I doubt the technology will ever reach the point where it accidentally and casually creates intelligence but the state of AI given 300 years of development sure isn't going to resemble current efforts in almost any respect.
Yeah I think literally everyone is a programmer. It's so common that nobody needs to talk about it. There isn't even a label "programmer." Writing code to make a computer do stuff is endemic to the population--just like reading and writing is now.
Agree, I came here to point out that Wesley was like the quintessential software/computer engineer. Yes, the episodes didn't sit around with a camera locked in on him while he worked for hours at a time, but there are no shortage of instances highlighting his technical abilities and the result of his various programming endeavors.
Just because programming isn't "exciting" as television (and therefore not the primary focus of most of the scenes filmed) doesn't mean there weren't any programmers.
This article is written with an equivalent understanding about how technology gets built that I would expect to see from your typical brain dead layer of executive management at your standard mid size tech company in the U.S. today.
If we're peeling back the layers of fiction - it does make me wonder.
Is it even possible for us to understand what programming would be like in that level of technology?
What does it even mean to write code? Are there different layers? What is the ship's computer? An OS? A complex program running on an OS? Do those concepts not even make sense in that context? When you write something for the holodeck are you actually writing code or are you verbally crafting something. Is it expanding the functionality of holodeck or is more like writing a plugin?
You don’t see any coders because you don’t make changes to the code while you’re literally flying inside the production environment, unless you absolutely have to.
You’ll have a team of coders somewhere in the home region. (God I hope they have remote work.) They write code and test it against a simulation. If that passes the code will most likely be uploaded to clone of the ship or a test platform with similar characteristics as the target deployment. Once that has been verified, it will be pushed to the production fleet but probably not installed until scheduled maintenance. Some updates will probably only happen during a “dry dock.” This is how current coding systems work and I doubt that will change in the future.
You do see some of the ship crew doing what looks like scripting or minor mods to meet the challenges of some unique scenario. But I doubt they’re making kernel level mods in deep space.
Not exactly true. The Apollo computers could be reprogrammed in flight, but that wasn't the norm. The astronauts were more operators and would enter commands the mission control sent them.
So yes, the Apollo computer could be programmed in flight, but the actual coding was done by engineers on the ground and the code / commands were related to the astronauts who entered them into the computer.
Oh they absolutely do. But mostly because the Navy considers carriers to be small portions of the US. They have hospitals and many other facilities that would not be present in a lower level of forward deployment. When they describe carriers, a common phrase is "project power" poor exactly that reason. It is not so much about being present as it is being present and able to support and project forces and reinforcements beyond their local vicinity. But I guess I would argue back that the Enterprise (Star Trek not navy) It's kind of a special case from this perspective... It's not really something like an aircraft carrier because it does not carry its own ships and use them to project its force outward. It is a ship on its own, even though it has the same name.
Software for the ship itself sure, but the enterprise is a also a science and exploration vessel. There's a full contingent of science staff who do things like analyze data and build probes. I think the better answer is that coding is treated more like math, its not a dedicated job, just a skillset that scientists are expected to posses. Maybe with the odd expert they can lean on (probably some of the engineering staff) for particularly challenging issues.
You don’t see any coders because you don’t make changes to the code while you’re literally flying inside the production environment, unless you absolutely have to.
Just one more example of how Star Trek represents a utopian future that we can only hope to strive for.
When I was in, and it's been many years, we were taught programming skills in case something had to be fixed in an emergency, like a war time situation and we couldn't get back to port in time to get it fixed. We never had to change any code but we were definitely taught CMS-2 assembly.
Unless it’s a necessary plot device or character quirk, or advances the plot along in some way, it probably won’t get mentioned much. It’s sort of like bathrooms in most movies. You know they’re there, you know they get used, but unless there needed as a plot device they just aren’t going to get mentioned much.
Everything that should've been a software problem was a hardware problem that could be solved by rearranging a few isolinear chips, pointing a blue laser at circuitry, or plugging Data's head into the main computer.
Which is probably what you want for a spaceship that carries your family on board.
The critical software should ideally just be controlling the hard systems of the ships, with the code being long optimized and “solved” to be just as reliable as any well engineered physical system.
Starfleet programmers than are likely spending their time adapting or integrating new hardware, or working on less critical software such as scientific research tools, entertainment programs, and other secondary concerns
Wasn’t there a whole race of programmers that their language was based on binary and were responsible for developing the software that ran the enterprise
"Yeah so the datasheet was pretty clear it maxes out at 5 amps, you forced us to override the limits and we threw 15 down the pipe and it burned out pretty much immediately. We don't have spares because you made us do this like six times during this mission so it's gonna be a few minutes to matter replicate a replacement part, but like an hour to replace it. Also now the air is gonna get real stale until we re-power the life support."
My favourite recent example is someone complaining that running the software from the environmental pipeline wasn't a very good solution. Yeah it probably isn't, you are right there sunshine
There kind of are. Several of the episodes are about peoples holodeck programs going wrong. You just don't see people having natural language conversations with the ships computer to develop systems. Well. Not very often. You quite often see them discussing the results of their simulations to make the warp drive do some magic with reflected dish. But the actual dialogue to program such a simulation would be really boring to listen to, lol.
You also see a lot of "typing" on panels when they are talking about reprogramming a subroutine or reconfiguring something, so it's not all verbal either.
There are many episodes of VOY centered on the Doctor’s programming, and I believe lots of characters (B’Elanna, Seven, the Doctor himself) talk about writing/rewriting his code. Also the episode with Zimmerman.
The one that sticks in my mind is Tom Paris trying to implement his own replacement EMH by shoving a bunch of medical dictionaries into a holo program. It didn't work, for obvious reasons, but it was amusing to me to consider the flyboy pilot "programming" a medical tool.
EDIT: I double checked myself and apparently, it was Harry who programmed it based on Tom's request. One again, Harry gets no credit for anything, even in Reddit comments
Ooof. As a programmer, this hurts, because it's real.
Typically in the military beyond a certain rank you either get promoted in a given amount of time or you retire. There’s no being a mid-rank officer for life; but because there’s a fresh supply of low new officers every year. With Voyager that’s… complicated.
I think the main thing is it's not very interesting for a film/show to show someone programming. It has nothing to do with scifi, contemporary settings have the same problem, which leads to frequently mocked scenes of people furiously typing away at a computer with scary looking green text on the screen and bleepy bleep noises coming from the conputer.
Like with the Bynars who tore that core up. But also in one of those Star Trek Shorts they used to have, on Spock’s first day they had a big discussion about the ship’s OS and how the new release wasn’t elegant. So I just figured developers and engineers at the Daystrom Institute kept it centralized.
There are toilets in ST, they're mentioned a bunch of times throughout the franchise, in The Final Frontier Kirk sits on one while in the brig, and one is shown when the Borg cut out a core ample of the enterprise in TNG.
Yeah, this was a design oversight that the Bynars rectified. When they reprogrammed the holodecks, the underlying reason was to install a Public Restroom program that would service the Enterprise's 1000+ occupants. The main challenge was accomodating the various alien biologies, which is why it was such a complex task and required time in drydock.
(Joking aside...I mean, I guess the holodecks could function as bathrooms. I bet every crew member has their own personal bathroom program. But I think that individual crew quarters also have bathroom areas.)
The low grade horrifying part of this is every time the power goes down the ship turns into public health nightmare. Especially for the crew that never got toilet trained by overly dependent parents.
One of the dumber things I've ever heard. TNG had characters talking about creating subroutines and such so the time. Sometimes we'll see a character furiously punch some arcane command into a console to make something non-routine happen. That there is some sort of programming going on in Star Trek that's beyond vibe coding a few voice macros with the computer's verbal interface is regularly discussed and generally not seen. Why? Because watching people code is boring, that's why. We never see Jordi code, even though he talks about it, because watching Jordi debug the 40 lines of Fortran 77 that make the warp engine work for an hour wouldn't be an interesting episode.
Apparently there are also no fuse boxes in Star Trek, because anytime the ships get damaged in the new series showers of sparks go flying everywhere. Not to mention the giant blasts of flame that shoot out behind people's heads that everyone ignores. It's like the ships are powered by anti-matter reactions and propane.
Eh, maybe all those explosions ARE the fuses. We're talking about massive amounts of power running through those EPS conduits, imagine how much worse things would be if those "fuses" didn't blow.
In fact, you know those "rocks" we always see lying out of consoles? Maybe those are literally FUSED fuses!
Whether it's electricity or plasma or some future-unknown-energy-stuff, assuming it works on the basic principle of the movement of something resulting in "work" (electric charge, plasma, etc.), then there's likely always going to be scenarios where you want to suddenly stop that movement if too much is moving.
So, something that breaks a connection in a completely failure-proof and passive way when "too much" is "detected" I think would probably make sense regardless of the technology. I imagine that would always be preferable to too much power going someplace that can't handle it (same as today, it's better to blow a 5 cent fuse than blow, say, a few hundred dollar television).
then there's likely always going to be scenarios where you want to suddenly stop that movement if too much is moving
I'm not wondering why they don't want to suddenly stop flow of energy. I'm wondering why they don't at least have circuit breakers. But to your point, maybe it's some other kind of energy that breakers wouldn't work with and you'd need a fuse equivalent.
Anything is possible, these people don‘t even put seatbelts on the bridge chairs even though they are hanging off the consoles half the time during a battle since the inertial dampers can’t keep up.
The flames are annoying enough, but when they start rhythmically puffing for the entire scene I start to lose my mind. Do the set designers thing a starship is going to have a gas line on the bridge?
If humanity can't figure out proper fuses or power systems in the future, you'd think they'd say screw it after the hundredth incident and just isolate the bridge terminals and power them with batteries or something. Bad guys of the week shoot up your shields? Your crappy fuses might kill some people elsewhere on the ship, but at least your core command crew isn't going to be blown up, electrocuted, burnt to a crisp, or some miserable combination thereof.
For that matter, given how often things seem to catch on fire, why the hell are they running around in polyester uniforms that are just itching to experience what happens when it melts onto their skin. Hell, I'd probably prefer the asbestos option on a Star Fleet vessel.
Yeah. The linked article is fun as a bit of star-trek-world-building speculation but the idea that it has any significance for the actual future of programming is silly. Hell, it's apparently not even good world-building speculation since many people here in this thread (and over on stackexchange) have pointed out that programming has been depicted multiple times in the star trek universe.
Yeah, it's fair to say that "programmer" as a job doesn't exist; however it's just expected for everyone to have a base level of computer science knowledge as a matter of course.
Plus it's not even true. Richard Daystrom was a big part in The Ultimate Computer. It's heavily implied that Daystrom programmed M-5. They even make him so famous that the character has an institute named after him and is name dropped in other series.
It just means the writers don't want to deal with that shit.
Actually Gene had a vision. This is why these things weren't a major part of the franchise originally.
Lateron in movies this changed a bit, like the weird one that was about ... rescuing whales. It was not a good movie, but still funny - here are the bloopers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD_hbCfg3X8
Watch Star Trek Voyager, and you will see Seven of Nine reconfiguring algorithms, and subroutines of the Doctor, or Tom Paris redesigning holo decks - the list goes on.
The only reason why you don't see people program in many Sci-fi series is the same reason why you don't see a hacker hacking in movies: because the regular person finds it boring to watch and/or lacks understanding.
The premise is not that there are no computer programs/algorithms, but that there are no biological (human or otherwise) programmers programming it in the future.
Discovery had some programming - one scene showed source for a Windows program, and another the ship's computer was attacked using multiple SQL injection attacks.
It is unsurprising that they're still using Windows and still haven't learned to sanitize inputs
I don't think it's some kind of question about wether they were forecasting ai or not
It's more than when star trek came out computers were still a very new thing in the 60's, they were basically magic and no one had any idea how they worked
It's exactly the same when you watch Tron, it's not some grand forecast for the future, it's more "no one who was involved in this has ever used a computer before"
One ep turns on the chess program Spock wrote being corrupted. Another mentions the ship's computer being reprogrammed by a team on a female-dominated planet.
Sure, there's not much programming going on board the ship - nor is there much on today's naval or space ships. Programs are used there, no developed there.
In this dystopian timeline we are stuck in, all systems on the USS enterprise are all hosted remotely on AWS back on earth, and gets increasingly slower ping times and less reliability the further out they travel.
By the time they get out as far as Jupiter, it takes 5 minutes for the controls to respond to each movement of the steering wheel.
Data was programmed by Dr. Noonien Soong. Juliana Tainer added art and music. Data programmed his own daughter (and probably other things when he plugged in).
There are no programmers in Star Trek because Star Trek is not serious SF, and because it would not be understandable or interesting for the viewers.
Picard says "Tea, earl grey, hot" and the computer instructs the replicator to create such a beverage. He doesn't even think about someone coding up a "tea" app - the computer is intelligent enough to know what he needs and controls the device to deliver.
Somebody wrote a generic program once that uses a specific (known) recipe and recreates it with ST magic energy on an atomar level. If the recplicator doesn't have the recipe, then it can't do it. How is THAT an example for AI? The speech recognition might be AI powered, but the creation of the drink isn't. Does the author think the computer and replicator have to start with zero programming zero each time you use it? And if the AI gets it wrong the replicator creates glowing plasma?
Do you think that Spock or Scotty plot together to create an appointments app?
No, the computer knows all about appointments and tells Scotty that it's time to decoke the engine at exactly the time that it needs it. The computer in Star Trek doesn't need programmers or apps because it does what its users need when they ask it to do something.
Their computers are so advanced, that being careless with the entertainment system often results in Moriarty level general AI NPCs.
So there is no need for programmers and any intellectual work at all. The V'ger certainly noticed that. The purpose of humans is ST is to bring motivation..
Without humans those ships would only float in space perfectly content with themselves.
I guess I don’t get the parallel. Running a compiler isn’t programming either. The input is the program string. Writing the program string is what we call “programming.”
Writing the compiler is programming. Running the compiler is not.
Because reprogramming has multiple meanings. One is entering context specific data to allow a system to process it based on existing instruction sets (like reprogramming your GPS for your next destination or reprogramming the sensors to tell them specific phenomena to detect).
The other is to change or extend the existing instruction sets of a system so that they perform differently for a given set of inputs.
There are no people who do anything. Everyone is a manager. The ship does all the work. And this is a decades-old criticism of the entire Star Trek universe.
I’m not familiar with Star Trek lore but what exactly made the wars and eugenics in that deferent enough that humans got their shit together compared to real life history because we’ve had thousands of wars and a few attempts at eugenics and we’re still at each others throats
nuclear war that killed most of the planet's population. in Star Trek: First Contact, when they go back in time to stop the Borg, they are in an era that is post war but still a time of conflict where factions are fighting each other in the remnants of society. It was the warp flight, at the time no more than an attempt to make money by Zephram Cochrane, that attracted the attention of the Vulcans to come investigate a society that achieved warp capabilities. If you watch Star Trek: Enterprise, they delve more into the elevation of society post First Contact and how they advanced beyond this point. I've just given you a very 10,000 ft pass of how they got their shit together, but essentially it was finally finding a higher purpose than greed and conflict, but it took devastation to even approach being ready for that.
As someone who is mainly interested in Trek for that early 'how did they do it' phase I've come to the conclusion early United Earth effectively whitewashed their own history.
WW3 probably happened much as described (with implications that much of the east of the world was nearly depopulated all over the place btw), the shattered governments of at least the EU and the US came out it in alliance with politicians making wild promises about a joint new constitution because it became impossible for them to maintain their positions and the existence of government in any other way.
And then the nasty part, Humanity had nearly wiped itself out to the point that even rudimentary policing of the north american interior at least had ceased at least in places even decades later. The people who lived in the victorious / surviving nations where government was still operating would have been terrified by the ordeal, the ongoing global crisis, the warlords taking over all over the place. United Earth mostly provided security and stability to its first citizens by raining hell fire down on anyone who thought that they had a different opinion out of fear of the next Khan figure rising up out of some nuclear wasteland and putting any real civilisation on the planet to its end. It seems to have taken about a century for United Earth to become the uncontested government of the planet.
Yeah, according to Star Trek history we're in for a real rough time. Even before the nukes there's widespread unemployment and unrest leading to a lot of violence.
Yeah, WWIII in Star Trek history comes after a lot of bad shit that just builds and builds. Genuinely hope we find a better way to improve as a society.
It actually already looks a lot like Star Trek. We blew past communicators that looked like tricorders and now actually with foldable they are coming back but very powerful.
The AI capabilities of today are very Star Trek computer like. You can ask it to do engineering or navigation calculations. You can ask it questions about history. Those types of abilities seemed very sci fi to me when watching originally.
And we will probably have a human strength and 500 IQ version of Data within five years or ten years max. Live human simulations in ML models are already a thing at an early stage like HeyGen interactive avatars or speech to speech models like OpenAI Realtime, or videos like Veo 3 etc. 3D printing of musculoskeletal structures is just waiting for a tech-oriented ambitious Westworld fan like me with more money to start blowing up.
There are, they are just not called "programmers" they are called engineers, since people in the 23rd century are expected to have a much, much higher IQ than we do today. This goes double for StR Fleet personnel.
There are many episodes, especially in the later series like Voyager, where people talk about changing things in, e.g. The Doctors code. There is an entire episode in TNG where small pink aliens employed by starfleet, reprogram and upgrade the Enterprises main computer core. They even talk to each other in a binary language.
So yes, there very much are programmers in Star Trek.
And I said Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish
That's the way we do things, lad, we're making shit up as we wish
The Klingons and the Romulans they pose no threat to us
Cause if we find we're in a bind we just make some shit up
lol you mean the scene where Scotty proceeds to pound out transparent aluminum on a computer in the 80s isn’t him programming? Lol sure Jan. Just like there are never any remarks about taking programming courses at the Academy or anything. You think Belona was troubleshooting the EMH by not coding?
What better way is there to illustrate the insanity of people pushing this angle than them comparing it to one sci-fi series, and doing so incorrectly too.
I'm reading a sci-fi book, A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge, that has a more realistic take on programming. It's built up over thousands of years, with huge amounts of tech debt, hidden functionality, forgotten functionality, etc. It mentions a character wanting to do a big rewrite too, and them being cautioned that they're not the first to want to do that, and to fail doing so.
The thing is, is more like OLD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC, so is all that "re-arrange this physical object("tubes") from this to that, change it, alter the input/output energy" and such that is absolutely programming.
But is even more old school than doing assembly. What is not show much is textual programming but Star Trek is both using the most archaic and the most advance methods at once.
This stackoverflow link from 2014 lists a bunch of Trek characters involved in programming of various sorts. I remember Quark referring to various programmers that supplied holodeck programs as well.
I feel like this is asking why aren't there programmers on battle ships. I'd imagine they're all at a home base and there's not a lot of need for advanced on the fly programming during missions and most on the fly needs would be within the programming capabilities of the ship computer.
The real programming for a system as complex as a star trek ship would be impossibly difficult for a human to work on without AI assistance. Still, I think there would be a need for programmers who work on the systems but they would be working on aspects that would be far too complicated to work on on the fly and would need to do it in a centralized way.
Also, aren't there several instances of the characters programming or reprogramming holodeck programs? It makes intuitive sense why programming would show up in those scenarios because those are smaller contained bespoke programs where it makes sense that a character could reprogram or on the fly.
Asking why the ship computer doesn't get reprogrammed makes as much sense as asking why nobody reprograms their car programs.
I find it kind of ironic that the author makes mention of the famous scene of Scotty holding up a mouse hoping to talk to the computer, but then conveniently fails to reference what happens next.
“Ah, a keyboard. How quaint.” Scotty then proceeds to effortlessly program into an ancient computer the necessary algorithms to manufacture transparent aluminium in a matter of moments.
People in Star Trek might talk to computers instead of programming them, but I think the point of Star Trek has always been that it’s a future where literacy trends have been extrapolated. Far more people can read and write now than they could 500 years ago - I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that programming is implicitly seen as a fundamental part of literacy 500 years into the future.
We face a much more serious problem. It feels like computer literacy rates are falling. Pointing to Star Trek has a justification of this would make me laugh if it didn’t make me want to cry.
but then conveniently fails to reference what happens next.
Right. It seems the author hasn't watched a lot of Star Trek.
Perhaps just used AI to grab scenes, which then fell on his nose as people pointed this out, e. g. Scotty using a keyboard next and the author not even knowing this. Seems like AI wrote this article or at the least the "AI, grab me random tech scenes from Star Trek the original (or from whatever Scotty was there - he looked older already)".
It basically analysed only the original Star Trek for the most part.
What about the BORG? What about Data? There are also many other elements and computers and what not. I feel this is not a complete analysis. It just attempts to correlate AI with "having replaced programmers".
It is likely that today's way of programming will either die out or be used just like COBOL is used - by +60 years olds only. Like perl. :P
That does not mean that humans will not yield instructions to computers in other ways than audio. Audio could be tedious. What if Data uses an advanced way to program? He moves his head to the side sometimes (which is also strange - why does a droid need to do this). Either way, my point is mostly that this is simply a very incomplete analysis.
People are nitpicking the details, but the truth is that if a universe existed in which Data could be created, and his "plans" were not lost for plot-related reasons, positronic entities would do the programming, not humans. The only reasons humans have such prominent technical roles in Star Trek is because Wall-E-style environments are not very interesting to watch.
Fundamentally why I think the Culture books are the better stab at tech Utopia, they do away with the assumption Humans will forever be the primary economic agent. Which I think is probably necessary to ever build one.
To add to what’s an already long list of examples of characters doing some kind of programming, let me add an example of an actual programmer on the Star Trek universe: Dr. Zimmerman, the creator of the EMH. According to Memory Alpha he was at the Jupiter Station Holoprogramming Center when he created it.
There was also that guy who designed a super AI machine to automate ships completely, immediately fell in love with it because it was based on him and had a mental break.
Course that was from the original series and I genuinely unsure now if a current LLM would actually be ahead of what they were aiming for in their far future cutting edge computer.
If computers did all the programming, there would be no reason for them to not also be doing all the other engineering, performing all the medical analysis, conducting ship-to-ship combat, and probably also making major decisions in general. Or doing just about everything else that's done in Star Trek.
Somehow those are still largely done by humans, albeit with the ample assistance of technology.
It's true that science fiction can make for interesting speculation about the future. But that doesn't mean it gets things right. Sometimes it does. But sometimes it also overestimates and sometimes underestimates technological progress, often all of those in the same work.
Star Trek still just speculative fiction, and it's not even of the kind whose main point would be to speculate about the future of technology. Instead the show is so far in the realm of soft fantasy sci-fi that the science fiction is just a setting for storytelling.
IMO the author is already convinced of the idea that programming in particular is something that can be readily taken over by artificial intelligence, and just sees his selective interpretation of a fantasy science fiction show as supporting that.
Nonsense. I remember harry kim tapping panels, chatting about subroutines and messing with the speech center and everything. Sounded programming-like to me.
As I grow older I tend to notice more and more how flimsy the worldbuilding is in some pieces of culture I thought was amazing in my growing years. The sci fi in Star Trek series and the Asimov novels is merely a backdrop reimagining of common tropes: the various Western TV shows where the hero visits a new frontier town every week, respectively the whodunnit detective noir stories of the 1930s. The core subject is most of the time about a societal problem of the current age, allowing the writers to project their beliefs through the characters (and a LOT of times in TV and movies the problems tend to be more about what it means to be an actor in a screenplay, go figure).
As a kid, I had the tendency to treat works of SF as historical documents about the future. As I grow older (and perhaps crankier), I view them as more akin to how the marketing department describes what the engineering department does. Sometimes cringey, sometimes cute, definitely not to be taken as gospel.
Im certain that the holodeck often requires specific programming beyond simple verbal commands and was referenced by the term programming in many episodes...
TL;DR—pretty much every episode is full of DevOps wizards averting disaster.
——
It’s an entertainment franchise.
And like all entertainment franchises the ratings would plummet if any significant amount of time were spent describing the Zzz-inducing minutiae of what most of the real world doesn’t care about.
FWIW, there are PLENTY of plots (read: most of them) where crew are on-the-fly reconfiguring a deflector dish, or a warp bubble, or a transporter buffer, or a tachyon emitter.
I think a bit quick to jump to gun. I mean yes they do talk to the computer in star trek. They also operate endless UI panels for whatever reason, and things like the "doctor" in voyager as well as "holo programs".
Programmers are just "creators" in start trek using the tools at their disposal in the future. It's not like there isn't technical knowledge and expertise being chased.
Most accurate thing about the tech in the show is the lack of coders. Least accurate thing is everyone on the ship not being Data, and Data pet being a cat instead of Jean Luc Picard.
caleeky@reddit
Ummm.... WTF are you talking about? Spock? Geordi La Forge? Data? Hell Crusher. There was lots of programming. The lack of precision (or conversely, the presence of conversational interaction) has no predictive value. It's a freaking TV show.
We still need to be precise in what we want to get. Specification is still important. This AI slop that gets it close-ish but not right is not the same thing.
gyroda@reddit
Yeah, they don't show programming for the same reason the computers talk aloud for everything - it makes for better television. It's not realistic that Picard shouts his access codes out every time he needs to open a locked door, that's a horrible security practice. Would you rather watch Geordi and Data sit there mashing keyboards or would you rather watch them swap little computer chips around or something? The latter is just a lot more visually interesting.
Even then, we often see them tapping away at panels doing god only knows what.
The alternative is bad graphical representations of programming. Like the VR episode of Community.
green_boy@reddit
Idk Hollywood seems to love the idea of the computer cracker just banging away at the keyboard with an assload of fuckin SQL or JavaScript garbage right before “zoom and enhance” or some shit.
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
So you do actually think that in the 23rd century we will still communicate with computers through programming languages?
remy_porter@reddit
Yes. Natural languages are terrible for domains where precision matters. The use of specialized languages for precision predates even computers. I don’t see a world where that changes.
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
The number of domains where we used formal languages before computers were very small. Basically just math and science.
Programming languages are used far more broadly than that. They are used for business apps, social apps, entertainment etc.
If we follow your logic, we should expect the use of formal languages to shrink back to what it originally was for: math and science.
Just as you would express the "return policy" for a retail store in natural language, so also will you express the "return policy" for a website in natural language.
remy_porter@reddit
You leave out arguably the oldest and widest used domain specific language: law. While law is not fully formally specified, it is a highly restricted subset of natural language meant to create precise documents. It’s rooted in natural language but emphatically is not a natural language.
Mclarenf1905@reddit
There's an entire profession dedicated towards interpreting law and as we have seen is corruptible and widely open to "personal interpretation", your argument is awful
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
So are we saying now that "lawyers" are "programmers"? Are Air Traffic Controllers programmers? ER doctors? Lots of disciplines have very specific language meant to reduce ambiguity. Are they all "programming"?
remy_porter@reddit
No. We are saying that natural languages need additional specification to be useful in precision situations. The point is that in all cases, the degree of required precision drives the formality of the language. The more precise you need to be, the more formal the language must be. Thus, there will always be a need for high precision, low ambiguity languages, akin to programming. Natural language can never fully replace programming.
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
The precise languages that we need either predate programming languages (law, math) or will be invented in the future.
*Programming languages* which are a very specific subset of "domain-specific languages", can go away, as past formal languages went away (e.g. roman numerals, Code of Hammurabi).
remy_porter@reddit
This is a category error. While Roman Numerals as a specific way of representing numeric values are not widely used, Arabic Numerals- which are the same class of entity- are. Similarly, the Code of Hammurabi represents a specific legal text, not a category of legal language. Your examples are more akin to saying, "Well, because nobody uses APL anymore, there will be no programming languages in the future."
I would also like to point out that all programming languages are a subset of mathematics, and the line between "programming language" and "mathematical expression" has been, and will always continue to be, blurry. At most, we could argue that programming languages are a deformalization of mathematics, and we could argue that we may see increasingly less formal programming languages over time; certainly, as the available memory and compute has expanded, the languages we use have grown more abstracted from the hardware. Though, as an interesting point, we've found that while abstracting the hardware is great for developer productivity, decreasing formality is at best a mixed blessing- defects crop up a great deal more in less formal languages and are harder to detect and correct. See how, for example, optional typing was added to Python or how TypeScript (a more formal language than JavaScript) has been taken up in web development.
All this is to say, you will never program a computer in a natural language. This has nothing to do with computers and everything to do with natural language. Further, it's worth noting, we don't generally have our users interact with computers using natural language either. There are limited use natural language interfaces out there, but at the end of the day- we provide buttons, text entry areas, and other UI elements because by constraining the interaction space, we make the usage of the system clear and comprehensible. And yes, a visual language remains a language.
TallestGargoyle@reddit
Navigating a space ship IS math and science.
The talky bit is an interface, not coding.
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
If navigation requires you to input new code then your user interface is f*d even in 2025, much less 2325.
currentscurrents@reddit
On the flip side: programming languages are terrible for domains where you need to manipulate informal abstractions.
If you want to pick out all the dogs from cats, you're going to have a hard time writing a traditional program to do this, because you do not have the tools to build a formal definition of 'dog' or 'cat'. You'd likely need a neural network.
I think we will be using a combination of programming languages, natural language, and learn-by-example in the future.
crashorbit@reddit
Whatever they are doing it will still be called "programming". And the expressions will be called "programming languages".
Just as the very first programmers used coding sheets and switches on the front panel and the next generation used paper tape and assemblers so to will future programmers build on the abstractions of their predecessors.
There may be many layers of abstraction but somewhere down in the bowels of the computer the high level instructions get decomposed into codes that are executed by hardware.
It'll still be assignments, branching, loops and calls to libraries. Maybe massively parallel. Maybe "quantum" but still built out of sequences of instructions for machines.
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
I am dumbfounded that you think that a job title less than 80 years old is guaranteed to survive massive technological change over the next two centuries.
Are you saying that you think that if you ask ChatGPT to make you a chart you are "programming" because at some level it is doing "assignments, branching, loops and calls to libraries?"
And if the interfaces of the 24th century are even more abstract than ChatGPT (as they necessarily would need to be), are you saying that the people using them will still call themselves "programmers?"
I think you have some wild recency bias combined with "nothing ever changes."
In this field, everything changes, and yes, programming could be replaced with something else entirely unlike programming.
YsoL8@reddit
This is where I find room for doubt
Supposing an AI tool eventually comes about that can take a vague request, question the user about precisely what they want and how it should behave and then reliably translate that into a programming and software engineering solution? Thats essentially what most people in Star Trek seem to mean by programming.
There seems to be an implicit split that happened once the tools became 'let the 4 year have unrestricted' levels of sophisticated where most people regard programming as the same thing as being prompted through constructing your request to the necessary precision and the much smaller group of people who actually design the tools, handle the high level architecture required for any of it to function, build the software too bespoke for the automatics to cope with.
I doubt the technology will ever reach the point where it accidentally and casually creates intelligence but the state of AI given 300 years of development sure isn't going to resemble current efforts in almost any respect.
ward2k@reddit
That and it was the 60's, basically no one on set would have actually used a computer at all
It feels more like they'd read about computers in a newspaper and decided to go off that and guess the rest
LongUsername@reddit
"Keyboard. How quaint."
psinerd@reddit
Yeah I think literally everyone is a programmer. It's so common that nobody needs to talk about it. There isn't even a label "programmer." Writing code to make a computer do stuff is endemic to the population--just like reading and writing is now.
Kthanid@reddit
Agree, I came here to point out that Wesley was like the quintessential software/computer engineer. Yes, the episodes didn't sit around with a camera locked in on him while he worked for hours at a time, but there are no shortage of instances highlighting his technical abilities and the result of his various programming endeavors.
Just because programming isn't "exciting" as television (and therefore not the primary focus of most of the scenes filmed) doesn't mean there weren't any programmers.
This article is written with an equivalent understanding about how technology gets built that I would expect to see from your typical brain dead layer of executive management at your standard mid size tech company in the U.S. today.
ThisIsMyCouchAccount@reddit
If we're peeling back the layers of fiction - it does make me wonder.
Is it even possible for us to understand what programming would be like in that level of technology?
What does it even mean to write code? Are there different layers? What is the ship's computer? An OS? A complex program running on an OS? Do those concepts not even make sense in that context? When you write something for the holodeck are you actually writing code or are you verbally crafting something. Is it expanding the functionality of holodeck or is more like writing a plugin?
bmiga@reddit
tl;dr- there's still programming and they are using AI (Data) to do it
caleeky@reddit
No. Not really. There's only the long game. Go procreate in the forest and teach the children about 1s and 0s.
leeway1@reddit
You don’t see any coders because you don’t make changes to the code while you’re literally flying inside the production environment, unless you absolutely have to.
You’ll have a team of coders somewhere in the home region. (God I hope they have remote work.) They write code and test it against a simulation. If that passes the code will most likely be uploaded to clone of the ship or a test platform with similar characteristics as the target deployment. Once that has been verified, it will be pushed to the production fleet but probably not installed until scheduled maintenance. Some updates will probably only happen during a “dry dock.” This is how current coding systems work and I doubt that will change in the future.
You do see some of the ship crew doing what looks like scripting or minor mods to meet the challenges of some unique scenario. But I doubt they’re making kernel level mods in deep space.
green_boy@reddit
If things in TNG work anything like they do in aerospace, you mostly nailed it, with exception to the voyager probes.
JJ3qnkpK@reddit
"guys why isnt there a spot for a programmer in a fighter jet?"
devilpants@reddit
The space shuttles had programmers though.
thorodkir@reddit
Not exactly true. The Apollo computers could be reprogrammed in flight, but that wasn't the norm. The astronauts were more operators and would enter commands the mission control sent them.
So yes, the Apollo computer could be programmed in flight, but the actual coding was done by engineers on the ground and the code / commands were related to the astronauts who entered them into the computer.
leeway1@reddit
Cause I know I would eject goose when I delete my debugging print statement.
CodeAndBiscuits@reddit
This. They don't put programmers on F-15's either.
Venthe@reddit
At the same time, I'd be surprised if they don't have one on the carrier
CodeAndBiscuits@reddit
Oh they absolutely do. But mostly because the Navy considers carriers to be small portions of the US. They have hospitals and many other facilities that would not be present in a lower level of forward deployment. When they describe carriers, a common phrase is "project power" poor exactly that reason. It is not so much about being present as it is being present and able to support and project forces and reinforcements beyond their local vicinity. But I guess I would argue back that the Enterprise (Star Trek not navy) It's kind of a special case from this perspective... It's not really something like an aircraft carrier because it does not carry its own ships and use them to project its force outward. It is a ship on its own, even though it has the same name.
MikeExMachina@reddit
Software for the ship itself sure, but the enterprise is a also a science and exploration vessel. There's a full contingent of science staff who do things like analyze data and build probes. I think the better answer is that coding is treated more like math, its not a dedicated job, just a skillset that scientists are expected to posses. Maybe with the odd expert they can lean on (probably some of the engineering staff) for particularly challenging issues.
mugwhyrt@reddit
Just one more example of how Star Trek represents a utopian future that we can only hope to strive for.
danstermeister@reddit
"So you're telling me you flew to the other side of the galaxy without the ability to fix software?"
bmiga@reddit
It's called The Enterprise. They need to have someone there that can do excel formulas.
vidolech@reddit
That’s why they are using waterfall deployments
deke28@reddit
No programmers on a navy ship either
FortuneIIIPick@reddit
When I was in, and it's been many years, we were taught programming skills in case something had to be fixed in an emergency, like a war time situation and we couldn't get back to port in time to get it fixed. We never had to change any code but we were definitely taught CMS-2 assembly.
mugwhyrt@reddit
Oh my god, programming isn't real! \s
kelthan@reddit
There are also no bathrooms in Star Trek...just sayin'.
Damnwombat@reddit
Unless it’s a necessary plot device or character quirk, or advances the plot along in some way, it probably won’t get mentioned much. It’s sort of like bathrooms in most movies. You know they’re there, you know they get used, but unless there needed as a plot device they just aren’t going to get mentioned much.
CjKing2k@reddit
Everything that should've been a software problem was a hardware problem that could be solved by rearranging a few isolinear chips, pointing a blue laser at circuitry, or plugging Data's head into the main computer.
IntelligentSpite6364@reddit
Which is probably what you want for a spaceship that carries your family on board.
The critical software should ideally just be controlling the hard systems of the ships, with the code being long optimized and “solved” to be just as reliable as any well engineered physical system.
Starfleet programmers than are likely spending their time adapting or integrating new hardware, or working on less critical software such as scientific research tools, entertainment programs, and other secondary concerns
MushinZero@reddit
That assumes the underlying technology doesn't ever change.
IntelligentSpite6364@reddit
It changes all the time but that’s the point, you only want to deploy with well tested, known technology
Evilsushione@reddit
Wasn’t there a whole race of programmers that their language was based on binary and were responsible for developing the software that ran the enterprise
CjKing2k@reddit
The Bynars were hired to upgrade the Enterprise, but I don't think it was ever said who originally developed it.
Snakestream@reddit
Data was the og devops
Digitalburn@reddit
Man, they really are cramming AI everywhere.
erinaceus_@reddit
That's just Android product placement.
pydry@reddit
Reverse the polarity.
If that doesnt work, reverse it again. Harder.
sunday_cumquat@reddit
Or modulate it at a different frequency
Turbo_Megahertz@reddit
Reconfigure the primary power coupling through the deflector array.
-lq_pl-@reddit
We need to turn hard, 360 degrees!
Alokir@reddit
"I can't raise the station, it's too far away"
"More power to the communications array!"
"It's not enough"
"Draw from life support!"
gimpwiz@reddit
"Yeah so the datasheet was pretty clear it maxes out at 5 amps, you forced us to override the limits and we threw 15 down the pipe and it burned out pretty much immediately. We don't have spares because you made us do this like six times during this mission so it's gonna be a few minutes to matter replicate a replacement part, but like an hour to replace it. Also now the air is gonna get real stale until we re-power the life support."
Alokir@reddit
"you have 30 minutes"
Ozymandias-X@reddit
I will do it in ten
Venthe@reddit
All fun and games until the rocks begin to fall out off the computers.
paholg@reddit
Like a USB drive.
bmiga@reddit
reverse it so that it is not positive or negative: go in between
jonhanson@reddit
of the neutron flow.
AndrasKrigare@reddit
Solving engineering problems makes much better TV than software ones
invaderdan@reddit
Did they have a backup Data? Like in the warehouse in case of catastrophic failure?
CjKing2k@reddit
Data was the backup. Remember the original?
TKInstinct@reddit
I half forgot about Lor.
invaderdan@reddit
I do not. Given the upvote count of both of our comments it seems like most people remember your version. :)
CjKing2k@reddit
Lore was before Data.
seriousnotshirley@reddit
You do NOT want to get into messing with the iso-non-linear chips.
Mathematicus_Rex@reddit
Or the isoquadratic chips
bitfed@reddit
Yeah forget everything Geordi ever did then I guess
CjKing2k@reddit
Geordi gave up programming and moved into full-time management after he accidentally created the Moriarty program.
Shendare@reddit
With a single misspoken name in a ChatGPT prompt.
YsoL8@reddit
These days I love nonsensical technobabble
My favourite recent example is someone complaining that running the software from the environmental pipeline wasn't a very good solution. Yeah it probably isn't, you are right there sunshine
qualia-assurance@reddit
There kind of are. Several of the episodes are about peoples holodeck programs going wrong. You just don't see people having natural language conversations with the ships computer to develop systems. Well. Not very often. You quite often see them discussing the results of their simulations to make the warp drive do some magic with reflected dish. But the actual dialogue to program such a simulation would be really boring to listen to, lol.
Mclarenf1905@reddit
You also see a lot of "typing" on panels when they are talking about reprogramming a subroutine or reconfiguring something, so it's not all verbal either.
ZZartin@reddit
There's a few episodes in TNG where they're directly talking about writing code.
But yeah it's very similar to today, a lot of people use technology very few people create it.
hrvbrs@reddit
There are many episodes of VOY centered on the Doctor’s programming, and I believe lots of characters (B’Elanna, Seven, the Doctor himself) talk about writing/rewriting his code. Also the episode with Zimmerman.
HostisHumaniGeneris@reddit
The one that sticks in my mind is Tom Paris trying to implement his own replacement EMH by shoving a bunch of medical dictionaries into a holo program. It didn't work, for obvious reasons, but it was amusing to me to consider the flyboy pilot "programming" a medical tool.
lunchmeat317@reddit
Ooof. As a programmer, this hurts, because it's real.
NamorDotMe@reddit
What does a programmer do after they fix all the problems
Answer the HR retrenchment email
seriousnotshirley@reddit
What does Harry Kim say after being promoted?
Computer, end program.
Venthe@reddit
There is a lesson on life there. You might have a shit-ton of experience, but there is only one captain - and the ship needs their ensigns.
seriousnotshirley@reddit
Typically in the military beyond a certain rank you either get promoted in a given amount of time or you retire. There’s no being a mid-rank officer for life; but because there’s a fresh supply of low new officers every year. With Voyager that’s… complicated.
HotlLava@reddit
Iirc several Voyager crewmembers also program their own Holodeck scenarios in later episodes.
Mortomes@reddit
I think the main thing is it's not very interesting for a film/show to show someone programming. It has nothing to do with scifi, contemporary settings have the same problem, which leads to frequently mocked scenes of people furiously typing away at a computer with scary looking green text on the screen and bleepy bleep noises coming from the conputer.
tooclosetocall82@reddit
Subroutines!
VirtualLife76@reddit
Goto
One_Economist_3761@reddit
PR#6
NuncioBitis@reddit
blt on_toast ; yum
RGB240P@reddit
S1E14 "11001001" with the Binars comes to mind
_Aardvark@reddit
The Federation had to offshore that whole software upgrade to the Binars, so maybe there really are no programmers in the Federation??!?
SeeTigerLearn@reddit
Like with the Bynars who tore that core up. But also in one of those Star Trek Shorts they used to have, on Spock’s first day they had a big discussion about the ship’s OS and how the new release wasn’t elegant. So I just figured developers and engineers at the Daystrom Institute kept it centralized.
bozho@reddit
More worryingly, there are no toilets in Star Trek.
RadicalDwntwnUrbnite@reddit
There are toilets in ST, they're mentioned a bunch of times throughout the franchise, in The Final Frontier Kirk sits on one while in the brig, and one is shown when the Borg cut out a core ample of the enterprise in TNG.
lunchmeat317@reddit
The NCC-1701-D bridge has a bathroom (marked "Head") next to the turbolift in the rear alcove on the starboard side.
The_Northern_Light@reddit
However that’s one of just a couple shared toilets in the entire ship
When I was a child I owned a book of the blueprints for the enterprise D, and this always stood out to me
lunchmeat317@reddit
Yeah, this was a design oversight that the Bynars rectified. When they reprogrammed the holodecks, the underlying reason was to install a Public Restroom program that would service the Enterprise's 1000+ occupants. The main challenge was accomodating the various alien biologies, which is why it was such a complex task and required time in drydock.
(Joking aside...I mean, I guess the holodecks could function as bathrooms. I bet every crew member has their own personal bathroom program. But I think that individual crew quarters also have bathroom areas.)
myaut@reddit
I thought they take out pee and poo when they teleport you.
wheatgivesmeshits@reddit
They just leave it behind.
danstermeister@reddit
Omg how douchey would that be?
"Thank you for your generous hospitality, but we really must be going, take care!"
《Teleports up to ship, leaving steaming piles of poo where they stood》
Swahhillie@reddit
That's why being the transporter chief is a full time job. Even in deep space.
warpus@reddit
“Chief O’Brien, I can still feel a bit of shit up my ass, energize”
“Yes sir”
Venthe@reddit
After all, O'Brien must suffer.
Spekingur@reddit
It’s just a fancy name for a janitor
Spekingur@reddit
On ships and stations it is teleported out during internal scanner sweeps for contaminants
wpm@reddit
"Computuh, vanish-me-poopum!"
spinwizard69@reddit
That would be so nice when you are constipated.
neriad200@reddit
excuse me while I take my morning teleport
MrBleah@reddit
That's my theory too. Why wouldn't you? Starfleet, cleanest buttholes in the galaxy.
Llotekr@reddit
Like this:? https://quantumvibe.com/disppageV3?story=qv&file=/simages/qv/QV05_096.jpg
ryuzaki49@reddit
Probably the only sci-fi that addresses why there are no toilets anymore in the future is Demolition man
Dealiner@reddit
But there were toilets in Demolition Man, they just replaced toilet paper.
lunchmeat317@reddit
He doesn't know how to use the three seashells!
JimPlaysGames@reddit
They are mentioned once in Voyager
qualia-assurance@reddit
Eeew, you bowel eliminations are suitable for our idyllic sci-fi? That's what the transporter-potties are for. Two to beam up. Energise!
Venthe@reddit
Number one, beam out number two!
hissing-noise@reddit
Think of potty-bot.
YsoL8@reddit
The low grade horrifying part of this is every time the power goes down the ship turns into public health nightmare. Especially for the crew that never got toilet trained by overly dependent parents.
qualia-assurance@reddit
Lmao. Sounds like a Halloween episode for the lower decks
yayforfood1@reddit
There are in the blueprints of the enterprise D. U know that hallway at the back of Picard's ready room? Yeah. Private captain's shitter.
fishandchips@reddit
Where will spock find the captain's log?
ImOutWanderingAround@reddit
Computer, show me the captain's log. 🪵
qodeninja@reddit
enhance!
Current_Zucchini_801@reddit
Eeeh, all grey, hot.
bmiga@reddit
is that an alien fruit seed? zoom in!
One_Being7941@reddit
They use the 2 shells?
FlyingRhenquest@reddit
They just beam the turds right out of you?
SleipnirSolid@reddit
"site to site transport: I'm constipated!"
Gwaptiva@reddit
Considering the uniforms, I think maybe they evolved a different way of evicting personal waste
MuonManLaserJab@reddit
I believe the canon answer is that they just go in the corner and use scourgify
thecoode@reddit
Yeah, bro, I think they just put it out.
ArrivalLopsided5792@reddit
One of the dumber things I've ever heard. TNG had characters talking about creating subroutines and such so the time. Sometimes we'll see a character furiously punch some arcane command into a console to make something non-routine happen. That there is some sort of programming going on in Star Trek that's beyond vibe coding a few voice macros with the computer's verbal interface is regularly discussed and generally not seen. Why? Because watching people code is boring, that's why. We never see Jordi code, even though he talks about it, because watching Jordi debug the 40 lines of Fortran 77 that make the warp engine work for an hour wouldn't be an interesting episode.
geon@reddit
Garbage. AI is not taking over programming. And I doubt it will ever happen.
And of course there are no programmers in star trek, because no one understand what we do. And even if they did, depicting it is boring.
MrBleah@reddit
Apparently there are also no fuse boxes in Star Trek, because anytime the ships get damaged in the new series showers of sparks go flying everywhere. Not to mention the giant blasts of flame that shoot out behind people's heads that everyone ignores. It's like the ships are powered by anti-matter reactions and propane.
fzammetti@reddit
Eh, maybe all those explosions ARE the fuses. We're talking about massive amounts of power running through those EPS conduits, imagine how much worse things would be if those "fuses" didn't blow.
In fact, you know those "rocks" we always see lying out of consoles? Maybe those are literally FUSED fuses!
mugwhyrt@reddit
Now the question becomes why the hell they're still using fuses
fzammetti@reddit
Eh, I think I can live with that idea actually.
Whether it's electricity or plasma or some future-unknown-energy-stuff, assuming it works on the basic principle of the movement of something resulting in "work" (electric charge, plasma, etc.), then there's likely always going to be scenarios where you want to suddenly stop that movement if too much is moving.
So, something that breaks a connection in a completely failure-proof and passive way when "too much" is "detected" I think would probably make sense regardless of the technology. I imagine that would always be preferable to too much power going someplace that can't handle it (same as today, it's better to blow a 5 cent fuse than blow, say, a few hundred dollar television).
mugwhyrt@reddit
I'm not wondering why they don't want to suddenly stop flow of energy. I'm wondering why they don't at least have circuit breakers. But to your point, maybe it's some other kind of energy that breakers wouldn't work with and you'd need a fuse equivalent.
TheEveryman86@reddit
I realize you're being facetious but in canon the rocks are known as Cordry rocks.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Cordry_rock
fzammetti@reddit
I think my brain kinda/sorta knew that (well, not the name). I must have seen that at some point.
MrBleah@reddit
Anything is possible, these people don‘t even put seatbelts on the bridge chairs even though they are hanging off the consoles half the time during a battle since the inertial dampers can’t keep up.
valarauca14@reddit
I've always wondered why there was rocks in the walls & behind panels that explode out.
bluestrike2@reddit
The flames are annoying enough, but when they start rhythmically puffing for the entire scene I start to lose my mind. Do the set designers thing a starship is going to have a gas line on the bridge?
If humanity can't figure out proper fuses or power systems in the future, you'd think they'd say screw it after the hundredth incident and just isolate the bridge terminals and power them with batteries or something. Bad guys of the week shoot up your shields? Your crappy fuses might kill some people elsewhere on the ship, but at least your core command crew isn't going to be blown up, electrocuted, burnt to a crisp, or some miserable combination thereof.
For that matter, given how often things seem to catch on fire, why the hell are they running around in polyester uniforms that are just itching to experience what happens when it melts onto their skin. Hell, I'd probably prefer the asbestos option on a Star Fleet vessel.
JPJackPott@reddit
Putting your bridge on the very top most exposed portion of your ship so it can have a sky light vs putting it in the centre where it’s most protected
bautin@reddit
I really fucking hate this sort of take: Extrapolating reality from fiction.
No shit, there's no fucking programmers in Star Trek. There aren't any fucking janitors either. There's also no climate change, hunger, poverty, etc.
That does not mean we will solve those issues. It just means the writers don't want to deal with that shit.
mugwhyrt@reddit
Yeah. The linked article is fun as a bit of star-trek-world-building speculation but the idea that it has any significance for the actual future of programming is silly. Hell, it's apparently not even good world-building speculation since many people here in this thread (and over on stackexchange) have pointed out that programming has been depicted multiple times in the star trek universe.
bautin@reddit
Yeah, it's fair to say that "programmer" as a job doesn't exist; however it's just expected for everyone to have a base level of computer science knowledge as a matter of course.
TheEveryman86@reddit
Plus it's not even true. Richard Daystrom was a big part in The Ultimate Computer. It's heavily implied that Daystrom programmed M-5. They even make him so famous that the character has an institute named after him and is name dropped in other series.
shevy-java@reddit
Actually Gene had a vision. This is why these things weren't a major part of the franchise originally.
Lateron in movies this changed a bit, like the weird one that was about ... rescuing whales. It was not a good movie, but still funny - here are the bloopers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD_hbCfg3X8
NegativeSemicolon@reddit
The future if we stopped creating new javascript frameworks
mugwhyrt@reddit
"New JS Framework To Correct The Issues Introduced By The Previous JS Framework"
pablomango@reddit
Lol😁
bubinhead@reddit
Lower Decks has lots of references to writing code, at least
cainhurstcat@reddit
Bullshit.
Watch Star Trek Voyager, and you will see Seven of Nine reconfiguring algorithms, and subroutines of the Doctor, or Tom Paris redesigning holo decks - the list goes on.
The only reason why you don't see people program in many Sci-fi series is the same reason why you don't see a hacker hacking in movies: because the regular person finds it boring to watch and/or lacks understanding.
palparepa@reddit
And when you do, it's like 2 idiots 1 keyboard.
cainhurstcat@reddit
Exactly.
NoobInToto@reddit
The premise is not that there are no computer programs/algorithms, but that there are no biological (human or otherwise) programmers programming it in the future.
palparepa@reddit
The guy in the picture, clumsily talking to a mouse, can actually use a computer. Here is the full scene.
palparepa@reddit
I remember that one. But Scotty, the guy that is talking to the mouse in the picture, actually did the programming later. Here is the full scene.
Horatio_ATM@reddit
Discovery had some programming - one scene showed source for a Windows program, and another the ship's computer was attacked using multiple SQL injection attacks.
It is unsurprising that they're still using Windows and still haven't learned to sanitize inputs
SpaceAviator1999@reddit
Little Bobby Tables, is that you?
ward2k@reddit
I don't think it's some kind of question about wether they were forecasting ai or not
It's more than when star trek came out computers were still a very new thing in the 60's, they were basically magic and no one had any idea how they worked
It's exactly the same when you watch Tron, it's not some grand forecast for the future, it's more "no one who was involved in this has ever used a computer before"
tom_swiss@reddit
Tell me you've never watched Star Trek without...
One ep turns on the chess program Spock wrote being corrupted. Another mentions the ship's computer being reprogrammed by a team on a female-dominated planet.
Sure, there's not much programming going on board the ship - nor is there much on today's naval or space ships. Programs are used there, no developed there.
Supuhstar@reddit
they also went through World War III to get there
AlaskanDruid@reddit
Ah. I see you have never watched Star Trek. Ouch!
steveoc64@reddit
In this dystopian timeline we are stuck in, all systems on the USS enterprise are all hosted remotely on AWS back on earth, and gets increasingly slower ping times and less reliability the further out they travel.
By the time they get out as far as Jupiter, it takes 5 minutes for the controls to respond to each movement of the steering wheel.
TKInstinct@reddit
To be fair we don't see 99% of the crew in any show. Though there is the lower deck which I've never watched.
ILikeCutePuppies@reddit
Data was programmed by Dr. Noonien Soong. Juliana Tainer added art and music. Data programmed his own daughter (and probably other things when he plugged in).
Cptawesome23@reddit
Programming is a requirement at star fleet. They are all programmers.
ReliableIceberg@reddit
Startrek takes place in the post-AGI age.
Round_Head_6248@reddit
There are no programmers in Star Trek because Star Trek is not serious SF, and because it would not be understandable or interesting for the viewers.
Somebody wrote a generic program once that uses a specific (known) recipe and recreates it with ST magic energy on an atomar level. If the recplicator doesn't have the recipe, then it can't do it. How is THAT an example for AI? The speech recognition might be AI powered, but the creation of the drink isn't. Does the author think the computer and replicator have to start with zero programming zero each time you use it? And if the AI gets it wrong the replicator creates glowing plasma?
Or somebody wrote that appointment system once.
Jesus, these are horrible examples.
nitkonigdje@reddit
Their computers are so advanced, that being careless with the entertainment system often results in Moriarty level general AI NPCs.
So there is no need for programmers and any intellectual work at all. The V'ger certainly noticed that. The purpose of humans is ST is to bring motivation..
Without humans those ships would only float in space perfectly content with themselves.
dream_metrics@reddit
They're vibe coders. Here's a video of some of the TNG crew vibe coding a holodeck program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S-Meq9MMuQ
PetsArentChildren@reddit
That’s not technically programming because they aren’t writing a program. They are feeding input to an existing program to produce the desired output.
Adobe Acrobat is a program that produces PDFs. This program produces 3D simulations.
astrange@reddit
That's what vibe coding is.
currentscurrents@reddit
If those 3D simulations are Turing-complete - and physics simulations are - it's programming.
giltirn@reddit
Arguably the same could be said about using a compiler
PetsArentChildren@reddit
Isn’t compiler a program that outputs programs?
Recoil42@reddit
Compilers are an existing program to which you feed input with the goal of producing a desired output.
TA_DR@reddit
exactly. It contradicts what you defined as 'not writing a program'.
input: the program
desired output: executable
PetsArentChildren@reddit
I guess I don’t get the parallel. Running a compiler isn’t programming either. The input is the program string. Writing the program string is what we call “programming.”
Writing the compiler is programming. Running the compiler is not.
dream_metrics@reddit
what's the difference?
BigDisc@reddit
That is what all programming is
PetsArentChildren@reddit
What do you mean? Using Acrobat is programming?
RadicalDwntwnUrbnite@reddit
No wonder there are so many holodeck malfunctions.
radarsat1@reddit
Are we forgetting that the Borg were defeated by a hand-crafted computer virus?
NuncioBitis@reddit
Then why are they always "reprogramming the sensors"???
Hari___Seldon@reddit
Because reprogramming has multiple meanings. One is entering context specific data to allow a system to process it based on existing instruction sets (like reprogramming your GPS for your next destination or reprogramming the sensors to tell them specific phenomena to detect).
The other is to change or extend the existing instruction sets of a system so that they perform differently for a given set of inputs.
Castle-dev@reddit
That’s why it always pays to be like O’Brien, a union man
qruxxurq@reddit
There are no people who do anything. Everyone is a manager. The ship does all the work. And this is a decades-old criticism of the entire Star Trek universe.
Venthe@reddit
And that's how we ended up with the lower decks show :)
shevy-java@reddit
There is some naughty stuff though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReOw_2f4lpY
Here is 10 minutes of it. It convinced me.
qruxxurq@reddit
Amazing. I've never seen that. Thank you!
PortugalParaTodos29@reddit
We're not pursing a path into a future that will look anything like star trek.
AUTeach@reddit
I mean, before star trek humans almost destroyed themselves with multiple wars including eugenics
Venthe@reddit
I'd even say that we are really tracking the timeline here.
Look-over-there-ag@reddit
I’m not familiar with Star Trek lore but what exactly made the wars and eugenics in that deferent enough that humans got their shit together compared to real life history because we’ve had thousands of wars and a few attempts at eugenics and we’re still at each others throats
Successful-Money4995@reddit
I guess that our wars and eugenics weren't big enough.
Or maybe the show is fiction?
crazyeddie123@reddit
we've got plenty of wars but we're definitely not doing eugenics
AutomateAway@reddit
nuclear war that killed most of the planet's population. in Star Trek: First Contact, when they go back in time to stop the Borg, they are in an era that is post war but still a time of conflict where factions are fighting each other in the remnants of society. It was the warp flight, at the time no more than an attempt to make money by Zephram Cochrane, that attracted the attention of the Vulcans to come investigate a society that achieved warp capabilities. If you watch Star Trek: Enterprise, they delve more into the elevation of society post First Contact and how they advanced beyond this point. I've just given you a very 10,000 ft pass of how they got their shit together, but essentially it was finally finding a higher purpose than greed and conflict, but it took devastation to even approach being ready for that.
YsoL8@reddit
As someone who is mainly interested in Trek for that early 'how did they do it' phase I've come to the conclusion early United Earth effectively whitewashed their own history.
WW3 probably happened much as described (with implications that much of the east of the world was nearly depopulated all over the place btw), the shattered governments of at least the EU and the US came out it in alliance with politicians making wild promises about a joint new constitution because it became impossible for them to maintain their positions and the existence of government in any other way.
And then the nasty part, Humanity had nearly wiped itself out to the point that even rudimentary policing of the north american interior at least had ceased at least in places even decades later. The people who lived in the victorious / surviving nations where government was still operating would have been terrified by the ordeal, the ongoing global crisis, the warlords taking over all over the place. United Earth mostly provided security and stability to its first citizens by raining hell fire down on anyone who thought that they had a different opinion out of fear of the next Khan figure rising up out of some nuclear wasteland and putting any real civilisation on the planet to its end. It seems to have taken about a century for United Earth to become the uncontested government of the planet.
gyroda@reddit
Yeah, according to Star Trek history we're in for a real rough time. Even before the nukes there's widespread unemployment and unrest leading to a lot of violence.
AutomateAway@reddit
Yeah, WWIII in Star Trek history comes after a lot of bad shit that just builds and builds. Genuinely hope we find a better way to improve as a society.
crazyeddie123@reddit
well we're definitely not doing eugenics, at least
PortugalParaTodos29@reddit
there's hope then s/
ziroux@reddit
Resistance is futile
GettingJiggi@reddit
Press Chapiti enough and he will say that yes, more like SW than ST, unfortunately.
ithkuil@reddit
It actually already looks a lot like Star Trek. We blew past communicators that looked like tricorders and now actually with foldable they are coming back but very powerful.
The AI capabilities of today are very Star Trek computer like. You can ask it to do engineering or navigation calculations. You can ask it questions about history. Those types of abilities seemed very sci fi to me when watching originally.
And we will probably have a human strength and 500 IQ version of Data within five years or ten years max. Live human simulations in ML models are already a thing at an early stage like HeyGen interactive avatars or speech to speech models like OpenAI Realtime, or videos like Veo 3 etc. 3D printing of musculoskeletal structures is just waiting for a tech-oriented ambitious Westworld fan like me with more money to start blowing up.
0Pat@reddit
I'll rather bet on cyberpunk...
usrlibshare@reddit
There are, they are just not called "programmers" they are called engineers, since people in the 23rd century are expected to have a much, much higher IQ than we do today. This goes double for StR Fleet personnel.
There are many episodes, especially in the later series like Voyager, where people talk about changing things in, e.g. The Doctors code. There is an entire episode in TNG where small pink aliens employed by starfleet, reprogram and upgrade the Enterprises main computer core. They even talk to each other in a binary language.
So yes, there very much are programmers in Star Trek.
Hottage@reddit
Zimmerman is a super famous holo-engineer?
Kfct@reddit
I always thought they "hard coded" sections of software into those chips they're always unplugging and rearranging and plugging in.
Matt3k@reddit
Oh. Right. Welp that proves it. Star trek, a TV show, is the evidence. Cool article.
psinerd@reddit
Incorrect - everyone is a programmer. It's so common that nobody needs to talk about it.
cmprsdchse@reddit
And I said Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish That's the way we do things, lad, we're making shit up as we wish The Klingons and the Romulans they pose no threat to us Cause if we find we're in a bind we just make some shit up
laffer1@reddit
False. TOS m5 computer episode called ultimate computer. Daystrom was a computer scientist
Spekingur@reddit
Everyone codes in trek. It is like learning math or whatever, basics taught early.
snowmanpage@reddit
disconnect the Holodeck from the Main Computer by decoupling the Heisenberg Compensators
Creative-Drawer2565@reddit
Yes, but what about all the engineering work in the engineering room? No AI there, it was practical blue collar
whiteorb@reddit
Everyone is a programmer. LCARs is essentially a visual programming interface.
Sweet_Television2685@reddit
programmers are as rare as jedi post order 66.
ooops wrong universe
adayley1@reddit
There are no coders on today’s aircraft carriers or cruise ships.
siromega37@reddit
lol you mean the scene where Scotty proceeds to pound out transparent aluminum on a computer in the 80s isn’t him programming? Lol sure Jan. Just like there are never any remarks about taking programming courses at the Academy or anything. You think Belona was troubleshooting the EMH by not coding?
chedder@reddit
they had an entire bit in voyager in which ensign harry was actively developing programs for the holodeck, it was a recurring theme in many episodes.
olearyboy@reddit
Yeah and they still need Uhura as beings still can’t fucking use zoom
punpunpun@reddit
Maintaining Enterprise Software is no fun
GettingJiggi@reddit
No muslims too.
shevy-java@reddit
This beautifully shows a total lack of understanding of the Star Trek franchise, originally.
So, rather than explain the mistake, I recommend watching Nichelle Nichols talking about why she did not quit - it is a very interesting insight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSq_UIuxba8
GettingJiggi@reddit
Gene Roddenberry was an atheist who believed religion was an outdated superstition that humanity would evolve beyond.
drizzyhouse@reddit
What better way is there to illustrate the insanity of people pushing this angle than them comparing it to one sci-fi series, and doing so incorrectly too.
I'm reading a sci-fi book, A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge, that has a more realistic take on programming. It's built up over thousands of years, with huge amounts of tech debt, hidden functionality, forgotten functionality, etc. It mentions a character wanting to do a big rewrite too, and them being cautioned that they're not the first to want to do that, and to fail doing so.
SomebodiesGotttaDoIt@reddit
Scotty literally starts coding in one of the examples from the post…
Dean_Roddey@reddit
I dinna kin debug it, Cap'n.
mamcx@reddit
They do programming A LOT!
The thing is, is more like OLD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC, so is all that "re-arrange this physical object("tubes") from this to that, change it, alter the input/output energy" and such that is absolutely programming.
But is even more old school than doing assembly. What is not show much is textual programming but Star Trek is both using the most archaic and the most advance methods at once.
predat3d@reddit
Dr. Daystrom has entered the chat
knome@reddit
This stackoverflow link from 2014 lists a bunch of Trek characters involved in programming of various sorts. I remember Quark referring to various programmers that supplied holodeck programs as well.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/52638/are-there-any-programmers-in-star-trek
bmiga@reddit
Are the people doing the coding AI or foreign aliens?
tmetler@reddit
I feel like this is asking why aren't there programmers on battle ships. I'd imagine they're all at a home base and there's not a lot of need for advanced on the fly programming during missions and most on the fly needs would be within the programming capabilities of the ship computer.
The real programming for a system as complex as a star trek ship would be impossibly difficult for a human to work on without AI assistance. Still, I think there would be a need for programmers who work on the systems but they would be working on aspects that would be far too complicated to work on on the fly and would need to do it in a centralized way.
Also, aren't there several instances of the characters programming or reprogramming holodeck programs? It makes intuitive sense why programming would show up in those scenarios because those are smaller contained bespoke programs where it makes sense that a character could reprogram or on the fly.
Asking why the ship computer doesn't get reprogrammed makes as much sense as asking why nobody reprograms their car programs.
ACiD_80@reddit
AI
PhantomNomad@reddit
Tom Pairs programmed the holodeck. Tuvok did also.
beebeeep@reddit
“You are absolutely right, Captain, cyanide isn’t supposed to be in earl grey tea. Here is the fixed cup”
Alokir@reddit
"ComputerGPT, my tea still smells like almonds. What would I find if I examined it with my tricorder?"
qckpckt@reddit
I find it kind of ironic that the author makes mention of the famous scene of Scotty holding up a mouse hoping to talk to the computer, but then conveniently fails to reference what happens next.
“Ah, a keyboard. How quaint.” Scotty then proceeds to effortlessly program into an ancient computer the necessary algorithms to manufacture transparent aluminium in a matter of moments.
People in Star Trek might talk to computers instead of programming them, but I think the point of Star Trek has always been that it’s a future where literacy trends have been extrapolated. Far more people can read and write now than they could 500 years ago - I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that programming is implicitly seen as a fundamental part of literacy 500 years into the future.
We face a much more serious problem. It feels like computer literacy rates are falling. Pointing to Star Trek has a justification of this would make me laugh if it didn’t make me want to cry.
shevy-java@reddit
Right. It seems the author hasn't watched a lot of Star Trek.
Perhaps just used AI to grab scenes, which then fell on his nose as people pointed this out, e. g. Scotty using a keyboard next and the author not even knowing this. Seems like AI wrote this article or at the least the "AI, grab me random tech scenes from Star Trek the original (or from whatever Scotty was there - he looked older already)".
grady_vuckovic@reddit
Star Trek isn't real either
shevy-java@reddit
Or!
The universe is not real.
I have some questions pertaining to its length in all dimensions.
shevy-java@reddit
That blog or website is mega-incomplete.
It basically analysed only the original Star Trek for the most part.
What about the BORG? What about Data? There are also many other elements and computers and what not. I feel this is not a complete analysis. It just attempts to correlate AI with "having replaced programmers".
It is likely that today's way of programming will either die out or be used just like COBOL is used - by +60 years olds only. Like perl. :P
That does not mean that humans will not yield instructions to computers in other ways than audio. Audio could be tedious. What if Data uses an advanced way to program? He moves his head to the side sometimes (which is also strange - why does a droid need to do this). Either way, my point is mostly that this is simply a very incomplete analysis.
1668553684@reddit
I spent 5 minutes of my lunch time reading this article and 2 minutes responding to it. I want my 7 minutes back.
Drumknott88@reddit
Rutherford wrote the code for Badgey and the Texas class ships.
A1oso@reddit
Oh yes, because Sci-Fi movies have always perfectly predicted the future
/s
Mysterious-Rent7233@reddit
People are nitpicking the details, but the truth is that if a universe existed in which Data could be created, and his "plans" were not lost for plot-related reasons, positronic entities would do the programming, not humans. The only reasons humans have such prominent technical roles in Star Trek is because Wall-E-style environments are not very interesting to watch.
YsoL8@reddit
Fundamentally why I think the Culture books are the better stab at tech Utopia, they do away with the assumption Humans will forever be the primary economic agent. Which I think is probably necessary to ever build one.
sudden_aggression@reddit
Star Trek is not written by engineers. I'm sure all sorts of idiots see software engineers as useless parasites.
AfonsoFGarcia@reddit
To add to what’s an already long list of examples of characters doing some kind of programming, let me add an example of an actual programmer on the Star Trek universe: Dr. Zimmerman, the creator of the EMH. According to Memory Alpha he was at the Jupiter Station Holoprogramming Center when he created it.
YsoL8@reddit
There was also that guy who designed a super AI machine to automate ships completely, immediately fell in love with it because it was based on him and had a mental break.
Course that was from the original series and I genuinely unsure now if a current LLM would actually be ahead of what they were aiming for in their far future cutting edge computer.
EndlessL00p@reddit
It’s more like everyone is a programmer
four_reeds@reddit
The "Binars" reprogrammed the enterprise computers in a Next Generation episode.
marzer8789@reddit
Bullshit. There are many instances of people looking at computer code all throughout star trek canon.
Objective_Mine@reddit
If computers did all the programming, there would be no reason for them to not also be doing all the other engineering, performing all the medical analysis, conducting ship-to-ship combat, and probably also making major decisions in general. Or doing just about everything else that's done in Star Trek.
Somehow those are still largely done by humans, albeit with the ample assistance of technology.
It's true that science fiction can make for interesting speculation about the future. But that doesn't mean it gets things right. Sometimes it does. But sometimes it also overestimates and sometimes underestimates technological progress, often all of those in the same work.
Star Trek still just speculative fiction, and it's not even of the kind whose main point would be to speculate about the future of technology. Instead the show is so far in the realm of soft fantasy sci-fi that the science fiction is just a setting for storytelling.
IMO the author is already convinced of the idea that programming in particular is something that can be readily taken over by artificial intelligence, and just sees his selective interpretation of a fantasy science fiction show as supporting that.
dual__88@reddit
Yeah, cause the creators didn't have an good understanding on what a programmer is.
meti@reddit
Nonsense. I remember harry kim tapping panels, chatting about subroutines and messing with the speech center and everything. Sounded programming-like to me.
Serious_Breadfruit81@reddit
of course not
appmanga@reddit
The era in Star Trek was way after AI, so this is prescient.
rpetre@reddit
As I grow older I tend to notice more and more how flimsy the worldbuilding is in some pieces of culture I thought was amazing in my growing years. The sci fi in Star Trek series and the Asimov novels is merely a backdrop reimagining of common tropes: the various Western TV shows where the hero visits a new frontier town every week, respectively the whodunnit detective noir stories of the 1930s. The core subject is most of the time about a societal problem of the current age, allowing the writers to project their beliefs through the characters (and a LOT of times in TV and movies the problems tend to be more about what it means to be an actor in a screenplay, go figure).
As a kid, I had the tendency to treat works of SF as historical documents about the future. As I grow older (and perhaps crankier), I view them as more akin to how the marketing department describes what the engineering department does. Sometimes cringey, sometimes cute, definitely not to be taken as gospel.
amejin@reddit
Im certain that the holodeck often requires specific programming beyond simple verbal commands and was referenced by the term programming in many episodes...
husky_whisperer@reddit
TL;DR—pretty much every episode is full of DevOps wizards averting disaster.
——
It’s an entertainment franchise.
And like all entertainment franchises the ratings would plummet if any significant amount of time were spent describing the Zzz-inducing minutiae of what most of the real world doesn’t care about.
FWIW, there are PLENTY of plots (read: most of them) where crew are on-the-fly reconfiguring a deflector dish, or a warp bubble, or a transporter buffer, or a tachyon emitter.
HaMMeReD@reddit
I think a bit quick to jump to gun. I mean yes they do talk to the computer in star trek. They also operate endless UI panels for whatever reason, and things like the "doctor" in voyager as well as "holo programs".
Programmers are just "creators" in start trek using the tools at their disposal in the future. It's not like there isn't technical knowledge and expertise being chased.
Atheios569@reddit
Perhaps their coding became a sort of certifiable code that either worked, or didn’t and shouldn’t exist at all.
PaperPigGolf@reddit
Mrmm, but in trek, computers are generally far less capable than they are today.
welkover@reddit
Most accurate thing about the tech in the show is the lack of coders. Least accurate thing is everyone on the ship not being Data, and Data pet being a cat instead of Jean Luc Picard.
dorkyitguy@reddit
There also wasn’t money or giant corporations