Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith for September 23, 2022

Don’t do what I say, do what I want.

An old office cartoon:

A pot-bellied office manager, hands to his head in exasperation, tie widely askew, moans to the ceiling above, “Sh-t! You did exactly what I told to!”

Sign on an IBM mainframe 1970s. “I really hate this darn machine,/ I wish that they would sell it/ it never does what I want/ but only what I tell it.”Word in first line rejected

A perfect computer will have only one user command. DWIM – - – Do What I Mean.

My computer keeps downloading Microsoft updates even though I told it to stop.

So I do in fact hate my machine for not doing what I tell it to do.

The funniest part is when people abuse the monitor, which is actually an innocent bystander.

Having worked as a programmer and having a lot of experience in telling them what to do, I can say that they’re very obedient. As usual the problem is with the human who doesn’t realize what they asked the computer to do. It’s the first rule of debugging, find out what you told it to do.

Some things should suck, other things should not.

When I was in my 20s I was a super fit electrician with a 3rd Dan Black Belt in TaeKwonDo and then I met computers. Now I’m a 69 years old diabetic, totally unfit and having led a life of daily frustration doing support. I hope I never see another computer again except to play games on.