The Beauty of not knowing why it works

I am the Treasurer for the Friends of Point au Roche Association and one of my jobs is to periodically issue a financial reports. To this end, I use a spreadsheet supplied by Ma Google which is called, unsurprisingly, "Google Sheets".

The following description may seem somewhat technical but I'm relying on the ubiquity of spreadsheets in the business and real world and that most folks have learned to use them somewhere along the way to keep track of something. The Google Sheets are very similar to Excel Spreadsheets which are similar to Lotus 1-2-3 which was similar to VisiCalc, the first one to be tailored to the Personal Computer revolution of the late Sixties. Now, let me say right upfront that I immediately considered VisiCalc as a waste of time and money. I was of the opinion that a computer-savvy person could write their own version using the then popular (and free) language BASIC. I was so so wrong. I reveal this to warn you before askinig me for tech investment advice.

For those lucky enough to be unschooled in Google Sheets,here is a sample command in one of my spreadsheets: =SUM(("DISBURSEMENTS"!U58):("DISBURSEMENTS"!U64))

This command happens to be stored in a cell in a spreadsheet named, " Master " and it says to add up the values in cells U58 to U64 in another spreadsheet named "Disbursements" --- a very useful operation if you have a spreadsheet that needs to reference information in another spreadsheet. And yes, that exclamation point is not a typo.

It took me much too long poking around the plethora of mostly useless documentation and just plain trial and error to figure out the correct syntax for this moderately complicated operation.

.I admit that I did run across some more streamlined methods to solve this problem (using drop-down menus,) but I wanted my spreadsheets to be as portable as possible in preparation for the day when the next Treasurer uses them. Thus, the program should be written as close to Excel format as possible using Excel-like formulas rather than high level commands found only in the drop-downs. Most all spreadsheets can use formulas lsuch as =Sum(A1:A45) but usually never use the same menus. When I type this formula into a spreadsheet cell, the contents of the cell change from the formula to what the formula calculates; in this case it is the sum of the value from cell A1 To A45

Portability is also an important piece of the strategy of Reusability in the discipline of Computer science. Why is that and what do I mean by “Reuseability”? Let me explain with a simplified example.

Let’s imagine that I have written a spiffy spreadsheet program (think app) that helps another program to decide which ads the will flash up on your screen as you run the applications you normally use (remember, it’s the ads that make the app “free”). I decide that I and other programmers could use this program in many of other applications--- wouldn’t it be nicer and easier to use just one line of code which “calls” my app rather than rewriting the whole thing every time a new program needs to use it? Of course. The best part is that anyone can use my spreadsheet app without knowing the details of the actual code which implements it.

This greatly simplifies the effort of other programmers who want to share my nifty app; so long as the input to the app is correct they can use it WITHOUT KNOWING HOW IT PRODUCES THE OUTPUT. Sound dangerous? Well, when you switch on a light must you first understand atomic physics? Of course not. All you need to know is that when you flip the switch, if the light was on, it will turn off and vice-versa. Indeed, much of modern civilization is built on this premise. That’s why you don’t need to be an automotive engineer to drive a car or a mechanical engineer to run a washing machine.

As Alfred North Whitehead has written, “Civilization advances in direct proportion to the number of operations its citizens can perform without understanding them.” We don’t need to know why it works--- all we need to know is how to work it: up is on, down is off and to heck with electrical theory. Saves me a lot of time.

Of course the downside is that rarely can anyone fix anything by themselves anymore -- we always need to call in an expert.

And how will I spend that time I saved?