Which came first? October 17, 2005
This is a filler post. It's a play on the old riddle, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" It's computer science related, of course.
Which came first, the program or the compiler? It just baffles me, that before the first compiler, people had to type in machine code directly. The first compiler was made this way... it had to have been, right? It sort of has philosophical meaning behind it. The chicken would have had to have come first, but something made it, possibly building it up by hand. Because you can't have an egg without a chicken, how else would it get there? An egg doesn't just appear out of nowhere, but neither does a chicken... Theories point to some form of evolution or "intelligent design". It's a topic worth mentioning. One that I have no clear conclusion on. I tried to post on it a few weeks ago, did some research, and was unable to discount either. The more interesting argument is that of intelligent design. A compiler would have been made with intelligent design :) A supreme being, a computer scientist like me, designed the first compiler so other supreme beings could write software. Imagine a supreme being designing DNA, which is like machine code, and from a living creature comes the ability to make other living creatures. Is it science? Yes, that's what we call it. It's just whatever you happen to believe. I have come to no conclusion, though. The one site I visited, very much biased towards the God part, has a compelling argument. The chance that the Big Bang would have ended up with a part of it perfectly capable of allowing life is so small that believing that a supreme being started it all is actually the better bet. Imagine that. Those gullible scientists :)