alt Hacker News> 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.
Ah I think I see where things went off the rails. I should've explicitly added "would have to do" to purposes for creating software; it was just on my mind, and left as an implicit.
I don't think there's anything out there that a computer can do but humans can't do per se. Whether it's manually doing what an MRI does, or sending people with the Mars rover. It would be anything from tedious/inefficient through crazy difficult/dangerous to totally impossible at this time (at some point in time it would at least be possible). Though that's just being pedantic, especially re video games.
> "this is just an implementation detail to let us run other software, so it shouldn't count"
That's essentially what I said, but in different words.
The main point in my original reply was to question the point of software creation, if not to stand in for human capability, wholly or partially. I don't see people creating software explicitly to just let it gather dust for example, even though that happens very often.