Re: high-school presentation, suggestions?

On Thu, 21 Mar 2024 14:57:09 -0300, Johanne Fairchild wrote:

What is the computer about?

The computer is the “universal machine”. On its own, it doesn’t do very
much: you have to write programs to tell it what to do. Those programs can
make it solve any problem for which you can write down the rules of the
solution--particularly if the rules are so long and complex that no human
being would have a hope of being able to carry them out manually.

So the computer is about automation of tasks. Nowadays, most people do
things on computers through point-and-click (or point-and-tap) GUIs. Those
are great for performing canned tasks, that have already been
preprogrammed into the app. They are not so good for automating more
complex sequences built out of those canned tasks. That’s where concepts
like “scripting” and the “command line” come in.