LESSON 4

Before 1984, humans had to communicate with computers in ways that were easy for computers. Programmers and computer users had to adapt their thinking to the machines.

To tell the computer what to do, you had type instructions into a terminal shell.

Users struggled to memorize scores of arcane command and cryptic option flags.

And to keep track of the files on their computers, they had to learn their way around a file tree that there was no way to see.

The Macintosh 128K reversed that script, allowing humans to communicate with computers in ways that were easier for humans. Learning to work with a graphical user interface wasn't as easy as using plain English to tell the computer what to do, but it was a lot easier than learning to do everything in a terminal shell. It was a compromise of sorts, a middle ground that made computing easier for people by asking a computers to do a bit more.

Giving the computer instructions became as simple as navigating intuitive menus using a mouse, and filling out well-prompted dialog boxes.

And users could now find files by navigating a metaphorical desktop, replete with file drawers, folders, and documents.

The devices we all use today still rely on these basic design metaphors.

Let me explain with a story.

My first encounter with a home computer took place in 1979. I was eight years old.

Through a school loan program, my friend Nicholas had borrowed a Commodore PET computer for the weekend. First thing Saturday morning I went to his house to check it out.

Nicholas suggested that we write a game together.

"What do you want to write?"

I was sick of losing quarters at the arcade:

"Let's write Space Invaders, but the aliens don't shoot back!"

Nicolas looked at me with a mixture of exasperation and pity. He tried to explain that this wasn’t the sort of program you could just sit down and write in BASIC, but I didn’t understand.

“Why can’t you just tell it to play space invaders but turn off the shooting?”

What I didn't get at the time was that you couldn't just talk to a computer in natural language. You had to learn to speak its language—and that was really hard.

And for the subsequent forty-some years of my life, that has just been how things are.

I went to ChatGPT and explained, in plain English, what I wanted.

ChatGPT parses my request, and writes computer code for me.

With a bit of prompting, it even creates images of the space invaders and the player's rocket.