Africa missed the Industrial Revolution boat which started in 1760 big time and we cannot afford to miss the current Information/Digital Revolution!
It is Africa's main hope of breaking the shackles of underdevelopment because this Information Age presents a level playing fields for all participants.
Information Technology in my opinion and as a practitioner, is one of the easiest professions to get into. You don't need a factory or large capital outlay or large hectares of land to get started. Surprisingly, most people already have what they need to get started - your head and a computer.
By the way, the smart phone in your hand is a powerful computer, more powerful than the computer that helped put two men on the moon in 1969!
By the way, the smart phone in your hand is a powerful computer, more powerful than the computer that helped put two men on the moon in 1969!
Introduction to Computer Science - a traditional perspective...
Within our modern day computers are intangible beings called computational processes.
These processes interact with other invisible and intangible beings called data with the aim of changing their states.
The actions of these processes are governed by sequential rules called a computer program that programmers create.
Computer programs control the operations of these computational processes.
Effectively, computer programmers can animate the spirits inside the computer with their incantations (programs).
A computational process is akin to a diviner's idea of a spirit - invisible, intangible and incorporeal but very potent! It can fly a jumbo jet (autopilot software). It can pay out money from ATM machines. It can remotely drive a car on the surface of Mars! It can also control the behaviour of robots in a car factory and some have started driving cars in Europe and America now!
The instructions we use to conjure these abstract processes are just like a diviner's incantations. They are meticulously concocted from emblematic and symbolic pronouncements in mysterious and enigmatic utterances called programming languages (e.g C, Java, C++, Lisp, Python etc) that specify the function we want our process to undertake.
When a computational process works according to plan, it gives us accurate results.
Just like an apprentice to a competent diviner, a new and inexperienced computer programmers must study to comprehend and to anticipate the repercussions of their dexterity. Surprisingly, small mistakes (called bugs) in computer programs can have devastating effects!
Just like an apprentice to a competent diviner, a new and inexperienced computer programmers must study to comprehend and to anticipate the repercussions of their dexterity. Surprisingly, small mistakes (called bugs) in computer programs can have devastating effects!
Luckily for novice programmers, learning to develop software is not as dangerous as learning to be a diviner. This is because the spirits we deal with are securely contained within our computer hard drives and computer memories.
Nevertheless, computer programming demands serious attention to details, caution, expertise and intelligence because a little glitch in a software can cause a nuclear reactor to self destruct or cause a jumbo jet to fall from the sky!
Computer programmers are the current day diviners. However, they don't seek to know the minds of gods but the minds of humans. They can predict with great accuracy: tomorrow's weather, the likelihood of a stock price rising, the future price of gold or crude oil etc using sophisticated computer algorithms.
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