It was one of the biggest laughs I ever got at a presentation.
Back in the previous century I did a lot of public speaking. I forget the date and the event, but I was talking about making computers easier to use.
One of the issues that came up back then was basic hardware configuration. Just about every program you installed in the old days asked about your computer’s hardware: What kind of printer do you have? What kind of monitor/graphics cards? Do you have a modem? Blah-blah-blah?
The punch line was, “Why is the program asking me these questions? It’s inside the computer! Doesn’t it know?”
Well, you had to be there.
The question is valid, of course: Computer software — even back in the Cro-Magnon days of DOS — could easily inventory the hardware to determine what’s available. I wrote lots of little batch file utilities that would determine whether you had a color monitor, what the screen resolution was, whether there was a modem attached, a hard drive present, and so on. Simple stuff, well-documented.
The whole issue of software querying the user, not the computer, is silly. What if the human lies? Or more likely, what if the human doesn’t know?
You would think that after 20-odd years of computer revolution that this “what you got?” situation would be over. For the most part it is: Windows asks you only your language and location, and thanks to the ubiquitous GPS it may not be asking your location in the future.
Still, the problem persists.
Case in point: I’m learning the Java programming language. I’ve installed the Java SDK on my computer. That was cinchy. Anyone can do it: Just click the proper download link on the web, run the installation program, and you have the Java SDK — the Software Developer Kit that lets you write Java programs.
In fact, the SDK is all you need: You can write programs using a text editor like Notepad and run the programs at the Command Prompt. The documentation is online, and there are plenty of free tutorials.
Enter the Android Software Developer Kit.
You need the Android SDK to write programs (apps) for mobile devices. The Android SKD requires the Java SDK to be installed first. It even tells you that. But yet, just like that situation 20 years ago, the Android SDK is too friggin’ stupid to find the Java SKD installed on your computer.
Too. Friggin’. Stupid.
The Android SKD is made by Google. They are no slouches. Lots of smart cookies work at Google. But apparently they aren’t smart enough to write code that adequately finds a legitimately-installed copy of the Android SDK on a Windows computer.
Is the Java SDK installed on my computer? Yessir!
What happens when I run the Android SDK installation program? It tells me that the Java SDK is not installed and asks me to install it.
Apparently computer technology has not really come that far.
