I was sitting down with a couple of my fellow programmers after a long day of testing our new online shopping cart, and we asked ourselves a very important question:
Why don’t most science fiction books get the feel of programming right?
If you’re not a programmer, you’ll doubtlessly protest: “There’s a lot of programming in speculative fiction!” But there isn’t, actually. What there is is a lot of is hacking, which is to say breaking into established systems, usually with a lot of muttered techno mumbo-jumbo like “I’m in the mainframe!” while hopelessly-inept thugs spray the area with bullets.
