That phrasing is indeed much more palatable. ... rather than an invective against the use of automated tools
Weeeell. You see, its a bit more complicated than that reduction.
20 odd years ago, I was nicked for speeding going North on the A34 from the M4 junction toward Didcot. I was "clocked" doing "over 100 mph". The police bike that nicked me couldn't give an accurate reading because his machine was only capable of 100mph. Had I not slowed down once I caught up with a couple of trucks in front, he never would have caught me.
When the case came to Court in a small town nearby, I explained to the Magistrate (a kind of judge responsible for handing down the sentence), that it was 6am on a bright, dry & clear, summer Sunday morning. That I spent my working life, week in, week out, commuting to and from the outskirts of London in very heavy traffic with deadlines to meet. And that on this morning, I found myself driving in perfect road conditions, on an empty, dry straight dual carriageway, totally devoid of traffic, and I simply let the joy of the conditions go to my head, and enjoyed them, and the performance of my car.
Long story short. The magistrate apologised that the law required he impose a driving ban as I admitted to travelling in excess of 100 mph, and that the minimum ban he could impose was 2 weeks. He also refused the prosecution costs for the case on the basis that as there had been no real possibility of danger to other road users, the case should have never have come to court. That both the officer on the bike, and the prosecution service, had the power to make judgement calls, and both had made the wrong call.
Of course, they both vigorously defended themselves with "The law is the law" stuff, but none the less, the Magistrate imposed the minimum fine and ban allowed. He also asked me if I had driven to the court that day, and when I said I had, he deferred the ban for 24 hours, so that I could drive home safe from the local police tactics of lying in wait for recently banned drivers as they made their way home.
Under modern automated procedures--cameras with automated number plate recognition and computer dispatched fines--no such judgement call could now be made. And that's the problem with taking the human being out of the loop.
Automated tools are fine as productivity aids to the programmer. But once they are available, they become substitutes for human judgements. Once you can reduce their output to a boolean judgement, that is what happens. And once you reduce the set-up of such tools to the ability to accept the defaults, that's what happens also.
Its not just the way many (most?) people use these tools, but also the way they are designed so that they can (and will) be used that way. Tools that set out to aid the programmer in finding errors, become tools for counting tests--and making value judgements based upon the meaningless statistics they produce. And they become drags upon productivity, by forcing the implementations of the tests to reduce their output to boolean results for the sole purpose of allowing the machine to produce those meaningless statistics.
And in the process of reducing the test outputs to boolean values, they preclude the use of the human programmer's greatest assets. His intuition, and immense ability for pattern recognition.
So you see, it's not automated tools I rail against. It is the way they are used; and the way they are designed that not just allows them to be used that way, but rather, encourages them to be so used.
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
