Goal Seeking Software
In this design, the user specifies an acceptable outcome. The computer program has a set of operations it can combine. Crucially, the software must be able to try out different combinations of the operations without causing harm. When it finds a sequence that produces the acceptable result, the program is done.
Goal seeking is fine when the computer can identify every possible undesired result, but this is rarely possible. People are far more skilled at recognizing undesirable outcomes than software is.
Also, producing software to identify every possible bad solution is at least as complex as simply finding a solution. See the article on the frame problem for more on this.
Read more about this topic: Software Brittleness Problem
Famous quotes containing the words goal and/or seeking:
“Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children’s play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in “playing” chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)
“There is something I have forgotten, some precious thing.
I shall be seeking ornaments of ivory,
I shall be dying for a jungle fruit.
You do not hear, Bethesda.
O still green water in a stagnant pool!”
—Arna Bontemps (1902–1973)