Magic!

I’m going to tell you about a guy I know. He’s really smart and clever. He cares about all the right things, and is quite pleasant to know. However, at some point in the past, he’s decided that computers are **magic**  .

They’ve got fairies inside, and if you shake them too much, all the pixie dust dribbles out the cracks, and the whole thing stops working. Fucking magic! This is not a problem, really. I myself have decided, in similar fashion, that cars are magic. Put petrol in, and the goblins under the hood drink it and push. Or something. Isn’t it great. Because things are magic, they cannot be understood – so one really ought not to waste too much time trying to get one’s head around them. It’s magic! You’re not supposed to understand what’s going on.

The odd thing is, this guy (remember him from the first paragraph?) seems like the type of person who would be interested in technology for the sake of it. He’s curious, interested in new things, and generally very aware of what goes on around him in the world.

I decided that cars were magic when I was 16 or 17. Around the time most kids are thinking about getting a cool car, I was thinking about getting a cool computer. Zowie! I had a 16" monitor back then, and it was eeee-nooorrr-mus. I was so cool. I even had an SE/30. Yeah, baby. I rocked. I understood computers pretty well. Bits of thing fly around in there, sending messages to each other, asking other bits of thing to do things for them. Simple. Look under the hood of a car? Goblins! Bad smells! Dirty!

I wonder if first-paragraph guy feels the same way about computers, and when his magic moment was?

The real point of this essay is this: even though computers aren’t magic, MySQL is. Evil, black, dark magic that silently and randomly refuses to update tables whenever it feels like it. No pattern, no rhyme or reason. Poof. Magic.