Guy Steele on Programming as Magic

I think it's not an accident that we often use the imagery of magic to describe programming. We speak of computing Wizards and we think of things happening by magic or automagically. And I think that's because being able to get a machine to do what you want is the closest thing we've got in technology to adolescent wish-fulfillment. And if you look at the fairy tales, people want to be able to just think in their minds what they want, wave their hands, and it happens. And of course the fair...