The word `computer' is wrong. We should never have adopted it for devices that are now used for symbolic transformations in addition to those in calculation. `Symtar' would be better.
Those World War II neologisms, `sonar' and `radar' make me think of `symtar'. In the mode of a military bureaucrat, I would claim that the word is an abbreviation for the phrase `SYMbolic Transformation And Revision', in the same way that `sonar' is an abbreviation for the phrase `SOund Navigation And Ranging'. Just as we talk about a `television set', we would talk about a `symtar set'. There are `television networks'; the Internet is a `symtar network'.
Unfortunately, we use the word `computer' instead. It is easy to see how that word came about. Early computing machines were devices for doing calculations. They replaced the people who had previously done the work.
Indeed, in the old days, a computer was a person who computed, just as a baker was a person who baked and a typewriter was a person who wrote on a typewriting machine. However, in the past century and a half, the words `computer' and `typewriter' shifted from referring to the person to referring to the machine. In contrast, the words `baker' and `writer' have kept their original meanings.
Computers, the contemporary machines, do make arithmetical calculations; they compute just as people did two centuries ago. In addition, however, they do more: they are often used for symbolic transformations, such as reading and writing, for displaying and transforming images, and for communications. For many people who use computers, these additional actions are more salient than calculations.
For example, starting several decades ago, people started using the machines as cut-and-paste and personal typesetting devices. This was the era in which `computers' were often used as super-typewriters. You can see the traces of this history in 1885 style keyboards, in which the key to the left of the A key is labeled Caps_Lock. In a device that is understood to be a general symbolic transformation machine, the key would be labeled Control.
It is misleading to refer to these machines as `computers', yet that is what we do. The people who introduced the phrase `information technology' are often considered the worst of corporate bureaucrats; but as much as I personally hate the phrase, it tells us what a `universal information machine' can do: the machine offers a technology that can transform information.
(The machine is only universal for information. It cannot dig a ditch or build a house; it lacks the proper effectors and sensors; it is not a von Neumann machine, but it is a machine that can act upon information. It is true that effectors and sensors operated by universal information machines, robots, are becoming widespread in industry. But they are not yet as much a part of everyday experience as are `computers'.)
Another metaphor appears when humans configure a machine that transforms information. Rather than specify the procedure as a `recipe', which is what we call instructions for human cooks, we talk about the configuration as a `program'. Earlier, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word `program' meant a public notice; then the word meant the outline of what would take place during a public event; then an outline or abstract of what would be done. The contemporary computer meaning is more than a mere outline of what should be done; it is a specific set of orders.
The concept of `recipe' is may well help humans better than that of `program'. Recipes are imperative, like the instructions humans give to computers. Outside of computing, a program is a description, not a set of directions. Even remarks that appear to humans as statements about a situation are imperatives to computers. (Of course, the concepts of `instructions', `directions', and `orders' depend on yet more metaphors.)
For `programmers' another favored set of metaphors comes from the construction industry. Just as we build houses, we build programs. Or we `make' them or `assemble' them. We link together parts. Good programmers work with modules. They enjoy a clean architecture.
I will not go into the various meanings attendant on the word `develop', except to note that often enough a `developer' is an entity that is changing itself, not one that changes others.
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