Nick once asked the list how a computer
perceives and experiences itself. The
answer is of course it does not do this.
Usually. But if a computer would be able
to feel, then it would probably perceive
error messages as painful.
Error messages are a bit like pain, because
they indicate that something has gone wrong.
They are not pleasant, but if they are
missing (as for example in Javascript)
it can be even worse, because you don't
know what is wrong and why.
In this sense, warnings are like little
itchings, errors are like weak pain
and fatal errors are like heavy pain.
A computer with a fatal system error
like kernel panic or blue screen of
death can considered as dead.
What do you think, does this analogy
make sense? For a distributed system
of computers, for instance a whole
datacenter, the worst thing that can
happen is an increasing number of fatal
system errors, for example computers
with kernel panic. In such a system
the loss of computer power and machines
would be painful.
-J.
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