I intended this blog to have some focus on religion and on technology, the two areas that I spend most of my time thinking about. So far I haven’t felt able to contribute anything useful about tech, but here’s a topic that for me applies to both — the parallels between a persons’ growth through life, and the process for writing working computer software.
Both are usually iterative, and involve verification that changes comprise progress in the desired direction and do not reintroduce old problems. Of course this analogy only goes so far, but it’s fun to play with.
So when writing a new program in this paradigm, the first step is to construct the tests that it must pass, and then to run those tests and watch it fail (because there is no program yet). This verifies that the tests actually do measure what they’re supposed to. (One recent beginner book that emphasizes this process is Ken Youens-Clark’s Tiny Python Projects (Manning, 2020)). Then you gradually add functionality until those tests pass.Then later on as changes are made, the tests are re-run to make sure nothing has broken.
And as we grow up as people, situations come up to test our abilities and our reactions. As a little kid trying to walk, this is very visible; as an older person encountering trying situations, or opportunities to be kind or helpful, we might look back on those and say to ourselves something along the lines of “I thought I was a really nice person, but I completely handled that situation wrongly”, or “I thought I was over that weakness, but I just fell into the trap again.” With luck, we’ll try to do better the next time, or the next time, or … eventually.
With enough social status, or success in our careers, or money, it’s possible to be more insulated from tests — especially if we’re around people who are just like us, who reinforce our own self-esteem a little too much, and we can coast along feeling self-satisfied. Then life hauls out that Python test-harness and shows us, and maybe those around us, that it’s time to improve some more. Over time (sometimes a very looong time) this increases our abilities, like the little kid who achieves walking, then walking without falling, then running, then helping in the family, then helping in a community …
Something we can do to help this, maybe, is to ask 3 questions at the end of each day:
- what did I do well today?
- what could I have done better?
- what were my blessings?
Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning; for death, unheralded, shall come upon thee and thou shalt be called to give account for thy deeds.
— Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words