Midnight Programmer Summary and Analysis

Carl Alsing was working late at night and promised to show the author what midnight programming was. They were playing the game of Adventure, which traveled among the nation's computer programmers. It is a game where the players try to move through the levels by typing in their instructions on the screen. The game is extremely popular among computer programmers who have to find the best solution for each situation. They left the game to go for coffee.

"How can the machine perform its tricks? The general answer lies in the fact that computers can follow conditional instructions. They can take two values and compare them - that comes down to simple arithmetic - and, if so commanded, can perform one action if the values are equal and another if hey are not. In this ability to follow conditional...