Chapter 3: The Houyhnhnm Version of Salvation
Following our discussion on persistence, Ngnghm, or Ann as I call her, had plenty of questions about how Human computer systems held together when they can’t seem to get basic persistence right. But in return, I had even more questions about what Houyhnhnm computing systems could even be like, when all data persisted by default: What did the user interface look like? Was there no more save button? What happened when you copied or deleted files? Were there files at all? How did people deal with all the garbage? Were your mistakes forever? If you somehow hosed your machine, would it remain forever hosed? How did you test potentially dangerous changes?