This post comes from an older blog. The argument is hastily made but I think there is still merit to it.
Essentially, the wizards were believed to be people who were deeply aware of the laws and systems of the world around them.
Where a normal person sees a tree, the wizard sees the metaphysical (that is, that which is beyond the physical) nature of the tree. With this knowledge, the wizard works to change the metaphysical subtly to bring about much greater change in the physical.
If it is unclear how a subtle metaphysical change can greatly change the physical, think about it this way: We have the tree – which is physical – and two metaphysical sets of qualities of the tree: the set of things which are true about the tree, and the set of things which are false about the tree. These two sets are not physical things, but it is clear that they must exist, for there are things which are true and false about the tree, therefore they are metaphysical. We can imagine these two sets as lists that might look like this:
It is true that the tree's leaves are green.
It is true that the tree has a trunk.
It is true that the tree's trunk is wooden.
...
It is false that the tree's leaves are pink.
It is false that the tree's trunk is golden.
It is false that the tree is dead.
...
If these sets were to be manipulated, then the tree would have to change with them, because the sets are not separate from the tree: they are the tree; they describe the tree’s properties and what makes the tree a “tree”. Changing a line in a list is a much more subtle change than the physical, chemical, and atomic changes that it would cause.
Essentially, programmers are people who are deeply aware of the laws and systems of the world of today; the world of computers. Where a normal person sees an application, the programmer sees how the application may have come about. They can theorize what sort of frameworks were used and what the underlying code may look like.
The interesting this with code is it’s like the metaphysical sets we just talked about, but physical. Code is descriptive of an application or website or whatever computer thing you want. Some “tree psuedo-code” could be:
class Tree {
leafColor = #00aa00;
hasTrunk = true;
trunk = wood;
...
}
Just as with the metaphysical sets, the tree code can be edited to affect the tree.
This comparison interests me because of how ubiquitous computers are these days. They are everywhere; responsible for many aspects of daily life. Because of this, the code programmers write has real effects on the real world. Just as a wizard alters the list of truths about a tree to turn its leaves pink, programmers can alter the world with the right know-how and a computer. Wizards – in the magical sense – never existed, but programmers seem to fit the bill today. Perhaps subconsciously, even non-programmers have made the connection. On more than one occassion people have called what I do “magic”.
I suppose – in a way – they’re right.