There Are No Programmers in Star Trek

It just wasn't siloed by a priesthood. Everyone was programming. Spock was running simulations and logical analyses. Scotty was optimizing ship functions. Kirk was composing AI logic bombs. Sulu was generating navigational computations. Uhuru was doing signal analysis. This is people communicating their intentions in detail to computers, also known as programming.

I would argue that the people programming things that are used on starships are not in the field. The people in the field are the specialist who need to be there to monitor and explore. Most of the engineering work of design and development happens on research stations and other places that may not be reflected in Star Trek specifically. It would illogical to send a programmer so far away for work that can be done from anywhere. And that is retaining the concept of programming that is argued by society right now as being in risk. Not to mention that programming is not always by definition writing software at a keyboard.

That is just not true.

Holoprogramming is a recurring theme in TNG and VOY. There's even a recurring character that is supposed to represent this role of specialized programmer, Reginald Barclay, among other one-ofs (such as Dr. Zimmerman).

> Picard says "Tea, earl grey, hot" and the computer instructs the replicator to create such a beverage. He doesn't even think about someone coding up a "tea" app - the computer is intelligent enough to know what he needs and controls the device to deliver.

You are clearly not versed in the ways of Star Trek. This notion is directly confronted in the classical scene of Lt. Paris asking the replicator for tomato soup in VOY, and getting super annoyed by the way it is programmed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD4EVXkfe0w

Sorry, isn't the very start of the first film about Kirk hacking the simulation?

Confusing reality and fiction is something Spock would never do.

"They are talked at as if they were friendly co-workers and, and this is the really important point, the talking is not programming."

The technical manual of TNG [1] states, "Most panels are also configured to accept vocal input, although keyboard input is preferred in most situations for greater operating speed and reduced chance of input error by voice discriminator algorithms." (page 33). Even in the original Star Trek they quite often use the panels.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation...

This is clearly not true. You don't see people with dedicated programming professions. What you do see is engineers that have different job focuses. You have engineers dedicated to mechanical systems you have engineers dedicated to the computer systems and you do see engineers that are highly focused on specializations within those fields. If you wouldn't call the designer of the EMH program a programmer what would you call him?

Even in the current society a programmer is not some dedicated person to just program things. They have to be able to branch out and understand the systems their program is going to interface with. It is no different in Star Trek. It seems programming is more common across all jobs but there absolutely those who specialize in it.

In science fiction robots are commonplace. How where they built? That's never explained, because sci-fi isn't real.

Doesn't anyone else recall the holodeck where.. programs.. had to be made and loaded up for the simulation to work?

Isn't that programming?

> In Azimov's stories the positronic brains didn't need programmers, nor did they need computer scientists. In this world the techies were some sort of AI psychiatrists. Dr Susan Calvin is termed a robo-psychologist and she talks to the AI entities to try and solve their problems and make them do what we want them to do - sounds familiar, prompt engineering anyone?

I think it's a bit unfair to say this about Asimov, seeing how most of these stories were written in the 1940s and 1950s, before the idea of a "programmer" really came into being. But nevertheless, having done a quick dive into the texts, I found a few snippets where Asimov did describe the work of a programmer, with the best example possibly being the following from "Escape!" (published in 1945):

> The robopsychologist continued: “Here is what we’re going to do. We have divided all of Consolidated’s information into logical units. We are going to feed the units to The Brain singly and cautiously. When the factor enters — the one that creates the dilemma — The Brain’s child personality will hesitate. Its sense of judgment is not mature. There will be a perceptible interval before it will recognize a dilemma as such. And in that interval, it will reject the unit automatically — before its brainpaths can be set in motion and ruined.”

> Robertson’s Adam’s apple squirmed, “Are you sure, now?”

> Dr. Calvin masked impatience, “It doesn’t make much sense, I admit, in lay language; but there is no conceivable use in presenting the mathematics of this. I assure you, it is as I say.”

aren't there multiple times where crewmen say things like "i spent 2 hours fixing subroutines"?

This remembers me of Chris Granger's post "Coding is not the new literacy" [1].

Instead he argues "Modeling is the new literacy" and "In order to represent a system, we have to understand what it is exactly, but our understanding is mired in assumptions.".

Modelling is still required in Star Trek. The computer can make many assumptions, but the user still has to adjust wrong assumptions using voice commands or panel commands, as shown in many episodes.

[1] https://chris-granger.com/2015/01/26/coding-is-not-the-new-l...