alt Hacker News- Video games - only feasible because of computers.
- Medical device firmware - hardware control layer for medical devices, which are used to aid in medical procedures.
- Synthesizers - help to make music.
- Detailed universe-scale physics simulations - help to make certain physics problems more tractable.
- Mars rover control software - helps to remote control rovers.
- The Linux kernel - control layer that sits between firmware and actual applications, pretty much just a common shared library so apps don't have to each ship with a full stack.
I don't really see your point here. None of these examples counter the argument that software is created to automate human labour as much as is practical.
Video games are an interesting category since they're entirely enabled by software: I can't imagine anyone driving a video game manually (note I don't consider things like Chess, etc software to be video games in this context; more things like FPS, racing, etc). I do remember as a kid I thought that there were actually little people doing the stuff in video games though.
> I don't really see your point here.
The parent comment said "to do something that a human does/did", so I tried to come up with a diverse list of software that performs functions humans hadn't/couldn't've done.
> software is created to automate human labour as much as is practical
That's certainly a reason software is created, but not the only reason.
> Medical device firmware - hardware control layer for medical devices, which are used to aid in medical procedures.
I should've been more specific, maybe "MRI scanner firmware". Lots of medical devices could not exist without software.
> Synthesizers - help to make music.
Yes, they "help to make music", but synthesizers can produce sounds that humans cannot produce by themselves. If the upthread comment were about technology broadly rather than software specifically, I could've written "saxophones" here.
> Detailed universe-scale physics simulations - help to make certain physics problems more tractable.
"More tractable", or "tractable at all"? Simulations that would take 100 human lifetimes to compute on paper weren't even attempted before.
> Mars rover control software - helps to remote control rovers.
This clearly wasn't ever done without software, so I don't think I understand your response. I can't even imagine how it could have been done without software (my first ridiculous thought is very long cables going from Earth to Mars mechanically controlling a rover, but even if we had a magical material that'd enable that, the cables would get tangled up as the planets move).
> The Linux kernel - control layer that sits between firmware and actual applications, pretty much just a common shared library so apps don't have to each ship with a full stack.
I thought the pushback on this would be "this is just an implementation detail to let us run other software, so it shouldn't count". I don't think I understand your response here either.
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I guess my general reaction is: sure, if you broaden the criteria enough then you can interpret most anything as "something that a human does/did". Like: humans "have fun" and therefore video games don't count, or humans can jump therefore they "travel through the air" therefore airplanes are just "doing something that humans do". But I don't think this reading of the upthread comment leads to interesting discussion.