I always liked mechanical things when I was younger. I loved watching lifts, car washes, cranes and cable cars. I used to build Lego versions of all those. I like how you can see exactly how they work. It’s always slightly disappointing writing software that you can’t really see under the covers. I guess that’s why those transparent cases where very hip in the early 2000s (xbox, iMac etc.). You couldn’t really see how it worked, but at least you could see there was some complicated stuff in there.

You do occasionally get a little bit of mechanical action when coding. When my laptop does some processor intensive stuff, such as debugging a remote Portal Server in RAD, it does get physically hotter and the fan comes on more often. It’s like its letting you know its really putting a lot of effort in for you. When it gets really bad and it just can’t take any more, it occasionally makes those low level system beeps - you know you’re in trouble then. I always think its saying “OH LEAVE ME ALONE I JUST CAN’T COPE”.

I wonder if there is some clever way we could show how the code is working while we’re running applications. I wonder if the lines of code could be flashing up in the background somehow, something like on the Matrix, but more in the background?