Meet the Turing Machine, the world’s simplest computer. It consists of an infinite strip of paper separated into cells, a motor for moving between those cells, and a device for changing the information on each cell, or just checking what is currently recorded and using that as an instruction. Also, each cell only contains either 1 or 0, also known as a binary value. This machine, despite being so simplistic, can simulate any computer algorithm ever created.

Of course, this machine is mostly just theoretical. There isn’t much applicable use for making such a machine, and only a madman would attempt to write programs on such a device. But it illustrates a very important aspect about programming.

Computers can complete simple operations quickly, efficiently, and accurately, much faster than a human can. In fact, one of the most computationally wasteful times for a computer is when waiting for input from a human, because it wastes so many cycles just sitting there while you press each key to give it the necessary information to proceed.

This fundamental idea of rapid execution of simple instructions is crucial. If we can automate a process so just the computer can handle it without any human interaction, then the process can be done much faster. This is usually easier said than done, as we humans rarely think about all the minute steps we do to accomplish something we consider simple like going for a walk or having a conversation. But once we have established an automated process, a computer can perform it much faster than a human.

This is why things like Car Wars reports are so useful. You could manually document everything about your phone calls, organize it, compare averages, calculate percentages, draw up graphs, and finally obtain a report that displays your current status in a useful format, but that is a lot of work for humans that doesn’t require a lot of problem solving or critical thinking; it could easily be broken down into a series of steps.

We have a large variety of automated processes happening behind the scenes doing just that to manage the information into these reports. Anytime a user clicks on a report, computers are filtering through data to find what they need, performing operations on it to get things like percentages or max values, organizing it into easy to read formats such as graphs or pie charts, and then displaying the information in an interactive format that allows the user to look through the information and further request changes to display or the information filtered.

This gives the human data in a format that is easy to understand, allowing the identification for trends in activity or problem areas that need to be addressed. And at the same time, it gives the computers a very clear job with definite instructions, which it can use to accomplish this task efficiently in a timely manner. This is the power of computing; having a computer do what it does best, which is fast calculations, while a human does what they do best, which is making decisions and problem solving.