worked by:Hafeez Toqeer
What is Architecture?
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, architecture is ~
1 : the art or science of building; specifically : the art or practice of designing and building structures and especially habitable ones
2 a : formation or construction as or as if as the result of conscious act
2 b : a unifying or coherent form or structure
3 : architectural product or work
4 : a method or style of building
5 : the manner in which the components of a computer or computer system are organized and integrated
Ok, so... which of these structures may be considered "architecture"?
· A circus tent
· An egg carton
· A roller coaster
· A cottage
· A skyscraper
· Mount Rushmore
· A Web site
· A computer software program
Clearly, there are no easy answers.
Here's what the American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, had to say about Architecture:
"What is architecture anyway? Is it the vast collection of the various buildings which have been built to please the varying taste of the various lords of mankind? I think not.
"No, I know that architecture is life; or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived. So architecture I know to be a Great Spirit....
"Architecture is that great living creative spirit which from generation to generation, from age to age, proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man, and his circumstances as they change. That is really architecture."
—Frank Lloyd Wright, from In the Realm of Ideas, edited by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer and Gerald Nordland
What is Computer?
A computer is a device that accepts information (in the form of digitalized data) and manipulates it for some result based on a program or sequence of instructions on how the data is to be processed. Complex computers also include the means for storing data (including the program, which is also a form of data) for some necessary duration. A program may be invariable and built into the computer (and called logic circuitry as it is on microprocessors) or different programs may be provided to the computer (loaded into its storage and then started by an administrator or user). Today's computers have both kinds of programming.
Most histories of the modern computer begin with the Analytical Engine envisioned by Charles Babbage following the mathematical ideas of George Boole, the mathematician who first stated the principles of logic inherent in today's digital computer. Babbage's assistant and collaborator, Ada Lovelace, is said to have introduced the ideas of program loops and subroutines and is sometimes considered the first programmer. Apart from mechanical calculators, the first really useable computers began with the vacuum tube, accelerated with the invention of the transistor, which then became embedded in large numbers in integrated circuits, ultimately making possible the relatively low-cost personal computer.
Modern computers inherently follow the ideas of the stored program laid out by John von Neumann in 1945. Essentially, the program is read by the computer one instruction at a time, an operation is performed, and the computer then reads in the next instruction, and so on. Recently, computers and programs have been devised that allow multiple programs (and computers) to work on the same problem at the same time in parallel. With the advent of the Internet and higher bandwidth data transmission, programs and data that are part of the same overall project can be distributed over a network and embody the Sun Microsystems slogan: "The network is the computer."
(Thanks to Online Section, Hafeez Toqeer)
