This mind-like chess issue has come of age and its time I swept it under the carpet. I figured this thing could also be likened to the Chicken and the Egg dilemma. Well! Lets get started…

As I continue with this article which follows Thinking like Chess – Part 1 in case you didn’t get to read it, I am going to attempt to keep this article at a programmer’s viewpoint. Am at this time going to give a point then illustrate it there after… I figured if I don’t do this I will probably get lots of emails pumped at me because I didn’t follow some standards or stuff like that. Makes me feel like the prophets of old.

I remember back in the day when I was just starting out with this programming stuff how the first thing that gets thrown at you is a complete working programming… hey stop laughing. I know what you are all thinking. Yeah! ‘Hello World’ is still a valid program.

Anyway. As, I was saying. Once you have had the program dumped at you then its time for explanations as to why or why it actually works and what each line of code means.

At the end of ‘Your first lesson in programming’ you kinda figure you are a guru in this new field. I remember a friend of mine once said that if you ever go to a store and buy a book with the word ‘guru’ somewhere in the title, please keep off. The stuff will probably be crap. Here we go again. I am probably gonna get lots more email for this one… The keyword to note right here is that it’s a friend of mine that said it and not me. Am just the messenger. Cut me some slack.

So after your first programming lesson you figure out that now you can write the next operating system and kick the boys down at Redmond out of business. Reality then checks in when you sit in front of your screen, get your coffee ready then realign the keyboard (I figure its for health and safety reasons). You launch Emacs and shazaaam!! You have no idea where to start. Haha! Tail between the legs huh? They didn’t tell you that programming is much more than just ‘Hello World’.

Well back to our article. I am going to illustrate why thinking like chess can help solve the Chicken and Egg problem. For real… it can be solved. Well at least almost. The secret to all this is ‘backward compatibility’.

Yeah! Am sure you all know what that is right? After all we are all geeks here. No need to be ashamed.

The example I am going to give here is this. Which one should come first, the Operating System or the Software that runs on it? Piece of cake, huh? You have probably given your answer as the Operating System.

This brings me to my other question.

Would you find it business sense to write a new Operating System to rival, say, Windows knowing well there is no software that currently runs on your OS? Then again do you expect geeks the world over to write Software for a non-existent OS? I thought so… your answers are NO. So what I see here is a deadlock or in Chess terms, a Stale Mate.

One answer and not necessarily ‘The’ answer, is to go by the way of ‘Backward Compatibility’. This simply means that, by looking at the illustration above you will notice that an OS can exist without Applications running on it but Applications need to run on an OS.

Wait a minute. I know this isn’t entirely true but work with me here… I made this point for a good cause.

Our natural choice here is to build an OS then the software comes in later.

Assuming you go to a user and convince them that you have the most advance OS in the world which has the ability to do you laundry, cook your food, run to the DVD library, give you a massage, do your assignments, read you a bed time story and after all that, it never crushes on you.

They then agree to buy the OS but then what happens to all their favorite software that cost them an arm and a leg barely six months before hand? Ok maybe say you tell them to toss it out the garbage. Then again you will need an alternative that works in the least… the same way as the old one does and it should be able to read the existing documents.

See what I am saying. Problems are already popping up.