雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第9章:退隱山林(104)

Usually he worked overnight—he regularly booked Tuesday and Thursday nights. It was not all work on biology. He had, in particular, a 'bell ringing' program. Bell ringing? Working through every possible permutation? For whom did the bell toll?

圖靈長期承包了每星期二和星期四晚上的機器使用時間，並且經常一直工作到天亮。他有一個特別的“鈴響”節目。鈴響了嗎？在所有可能的排列中，鐘聲爲誰敲響？

Ask not. ... But usually he could be expected to emerge in the morning waving around print-outs to anyone who was around—'giraffe spots', 'pineapples' or whatever—and then go home to sleep until the afternoon.

不要問......但人們經常會在清晨遇到他，他會揮舞着打印出來的圖片大叫"看！長頸鹿斑紋！"或者"看！菠蘿！"，然後回家睡覺，一直睡到下午。

This night work was reflected in what was perhaps the most progressive feature of his manual, in which he explained how he made the machine itself do the secretarial work of keeping track of experiments and modifications.

這樣的通宵工作，不完全是關於生物學，有時還有一些對計算機程序和操作方面的深入探索。

Even in this technical piece of writing, there was a high-level scientific play with the idea of 'rules' and 'descriptions': the programmer was allowed to use the machine in its logical sense, the engineer to use it in its physical sense, and the 'formal mode',

在一段技術性的文字中，圖靈提出，程序員是在邏輯層面上使用機器，而工程師是在物理層面上使用機器。

as he defined it, was to print out the description of the operation that was 'complete' in another, higher level, sense:There are a number of modes or styles in which the machine may be used, and each mode has its conventions, restricting the operations considered admissible.

他還定義了一種"正規模式"：機器的使用，有許多模式或風格，每個模式都有不同的方式，限制了其可以接受的操作。

The engineers for instance will consider the removal of a valve or the connection of two points temporarily with crocodile clips to be admissible, but would frown on certain uses of a hatchet. The removal of valves and all alterations of connections are certainly not permitted to the programmers and other users, and they have additional taboos of their own.

比如對工程師來說，用鉗子卸掉一個電子管，或者斷開兩點之間的導線，這是可以接受的——當然，用斧頭把把機器劈了肯定是不行的。但對於程序員來說，卸掉一個電子管是不可接受的操作，他們有着更多的限制。

There are in fact a number of modes of operation which might be distinguished, but only the formal mode will be mentioned here. This mode has rather stringent and definite conventions. The advantage of working in the formal mode is that the output recorded by the printer gives a complete description of what was done in any computation.

機器的操作模式有很多種，這裏我們只說"正規模式"。這種模式具有非常嚴格而明確的限制，其好處在於，它的輸出結果能夠完全展示整個計算過程，使用者可以從中得到他想要的任何信息。

A scrutiny of this record, together with certain other documents should tell one all that one wishes to know. In particular this record shows all the arbitrary choices made by the man in control of the machine, so that there is no question of trying to remember what was done at certain critical points.

這些記錄還包括使用者做的每一項選擇，因此可以從中確切地分析出任意時刻的機器狀態。這就是對計算機"操作系統"的原始想法。

But apart from such by-products of his work, in this case anticipating the introduction of a computer 'operating system', the other users of the machine did not now have more than the vaguest idea of what he was doing with it; after the summer of 1951 there was virtually no contact between them.

但是除此之外，圖靈所做的大部分工作，都是其他機器使用者無法理解的。自從1951年夏天之後，圖靈就與所有人分道揚鑣了。