![]() This is especially evident in high-level languages, where the programmer can for example tell the computer to replace all occurrences of "cake" with "apple" in a text, and doesn't have to worry about how the system does it - they get a changed text back and that's that. It is something of a Running Gag in tech start-up culture that being the first to design the infrastructure of a new system is ultimate job security, as it would take years for another programmer to understand the coding to the same degree. And even if a single dedicated programmer wrote the whole thing personally, it's virtually certain that at least some of it uses infrastructure in the form of library routines or system calls that were not written by the same programmer.). This is particularly known in programming, where the programmer is the only one who really understands how what they've built works (and sometimes, not even them note Even a "simple" (no graphics, purely command-line and input file driven and with the only output being more text files) scientific application that does anything actually useful can easily exceed ten thousand lines of code in a high-level language and is probably the result of the work of multiple people, none of whom knows every detail of the parts they didn't write. This is surprisingly common in Real Life, with many different scientific fields having their own viewpoint on the issue. Yes, of course, the technology has a bizarre effect that nobody could have predicted - you really need to keep track of those inputs and outputs! Usually it's in the form of acquiring sentience or a bizarre weapon, or only being able to be used by people of the show's target demographic. So, since the financial bottom line or military advantage is so important, they go along with it anyways. The organization may be able to reverse-engineer copies, or lesser versions, but they don't understand how it actually works. Removing them causes the entire thing to simply not function (or triggers a more active response). The organization's analysts went over the thing, and while most of it makes sense, there are these elements, either program or device, that they cannot comprehend at all. Such technology falls into the hands of some organization, usually the military or a commercial business. The original creator is unavailable (either dead, an alien or from a long-gone civilization or otherwise can't be reached), but said technology is really convenient. In narrative terms, this is a device that produces near magical results but the comprehension of the device is at best a guess by the characters, meaning if it breaks a replacement is not easy. irrelevant and/or needlessly complicated.In engineering terminology, a "black box" is a device with one or more inputs (cake ingredients, an excerpt of text in Mandarin, iron ore), one or more outputs (cake, the same text translated into Frisian, a battle golem), and an internal process that is either: ![]()
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