There are programming and structured information standards in place which make it vital for computers all over the world to communicate and understand each other.
There’s a science for everything these days. The science of washing your hair so that it shines like in the advertisements. The science of growing your tomatoes bigger, plumper and juicier. The science of information. Huh? What’s that? Information science, now they’re making it up. Well no, information science is the discipline that investigates the behavior and properties of information, (now, when we say ‘investigate’ we don’t mean like Detective Columbo would investigate a murder, try to keep up) but to investigate the ‘scientific forces’ that govern the flow of the information and the means to process the information.
That reminds me of a bit of a tale, whenever my younger son used to go without underwear (don’t worry, it’s not that kind of story) he would say he was ‘going Columbo’. We didn’t have the heart to tell him he meant ‘Commando’, well, not until he was a teenager anyway! Maybe that’s how the dirty old men got it wrong too; their parents never did put them right.
Anyway, we seem to have digressed a bit. Computer programming involves masses of data, and the only way to make sure that other computers understand the data being sent to them, or downloaded onto them, is to have programming and structured information standards. This has been critical in the development of programs and applications. Websites are made up of tons of structured information standards, and by using universal computer languages it means that other people and programmers can understand, change and add to any website or application which has been designed by someone else.
Computer programming is a pretty geeky business (sorry, but it is) but in reality, anybody with a bit of patience and time can learn programming and structured information standards to build a simple website or update their existing one.