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:
“Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“Not only do I disbelieve in the need for compensation, but I believe that the seeking for rewards and punishments out of this life leads men to a ruinous ignorance of the fact that their inevitable rewards and punishments are here.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)