Life is about expectations, hence about disappointment. Expectations tend to remain unfulfilled. Stril has probably already broken your expectations by its extremely limited mathematical capabilities. It is a common view that computing is reducible to mathematics. Such a view does, however, not bear closer scrutiny. A number is merely a number. You can add to it, subtract from it, divide it and multiply it, but it stays a number. If computing could be reduced to simple mathematics, computers would only be able to handle numbers.
It is often claimed that the start of computing goes back to the 1840s. Lord Babbage and Ada Louisa Lovelace (A.L.L.) experimented with a mechanical symbolic computer. He was the designer, and she was the programmer. Cylinders constituted the core of the machine. The cylinders and their positions could represent anything, or almost anything - more about that later, not just numbers. The two inventors deserve credit for the machine, but the concept is a rather old one. All cultures use symbols extensively, and all symbols are multivalent. They can, in other words, have a plethora of meanings and may represent almost anything. The Christian cross can, for example, represent eternal life, but equally well suffering, execution, death, salvation and hope.
Modern computers are electrical, not mechanical, and they rely more on mathematics than the machine from the 1840s. Computers count in binary numbers. The smallest unit is a bit. A bit can only hold two values, either 0 or 1 and never both at the same time. Eight bits combine into a byte: 00000000. "1" in the bit to the far right means one. If we move one place to the left, it means 2. If we proceed even further to the left, it means 4 and so on. A single byte can hold values between 0 and 255. Computers contain larger units than bytes, but they all hold a limited number of bits, so the same principles apply. Numbers are important in computers, but there is a very important difference between a handwritten number and a number inside a computer. In handwriting, a number may be increased indefinitely. It is always possible to make it longer. Inside a computer, it has to stay within the confines of a container. Since the range of possible numbers inside a container is limited, it is possible to let each number represent a unique meaning. The number "73" is equivalent to an uppercase "I" which in turn may represent a certain sound or a personal pronoun in English. A handwritten number is merely a sign. It has a single meaning. A number inside a computer is a symbol, in other words a multivalent sign. It is the combination of numbers and containers that makes it possible for computers to transcend simple mathematics. The combination of containers and content is not limited to computers. It is also a central feature of human languages. In English grammar, a predicator has to include a verb, but not a noun. The predicator is a container that imposes limits on its contents. This is also a necessary feature. If something can mean anything, it means nothing. That is a dogma of linguistic philosophy.
The separation of container and content is at the very heart of computing. It allows us to choose an action for a container regardless of its contents, at the same time basing our decisions on what it contains. We can for example choose to print, store or delete containers where the contents start with the letter "A". We may change what a container contains or points to at any time. That is also a feature of any language. "He" can point to Tom, but equally well to Ralph or Dan. Signs are arbitrary. They have the meanings we give them. That is another dogma of linguistic philosophy.
The system of binary numbers, bits and bytes is central to decision making within a computer. At bit level, only two options, 0 and 1, are available, and they are mutually exclusive. With larger containers, the number of options increase, but the principle is still the same. For a single container, it is only possible to choose a single number at any given time. Modern computer programs may use several threads simultaneously. They can, in other words, perform several calculations in parallel, but it is still true that a computer never can base a decision on a calculation that has not been completed yet. Some scholars, Claude Levi-Straus among them, have claimed that human beings also think in binary oppositions: You cannot have your cake and eat it. Linguistically, it is easy to argue against such a view. Human languages contain a lot of reservations, such as "partly", "to a certain degree" and so on, but logic and practical considerations may give us a different perspective. You cannot decide how you want to travel from A to B before you have decided to travel from A to B. You can choose to go by car, and you can choose to go by plane, but you cannot do both simultaneously. Making decisions and enabling computers to make decisions of their own is very important in programming languages, but decisions play an equally important part in human languages. How we express ourselves is likely to influence perceptions and ultimately actions, but statements can also create new realities: I hereby declare you man and wife.
Human beings and computers tend to be rather impatient. Instead of basing their decisions upon the verified results of calculations, they often base their decisions upon the expected outcome of those calculations. Computer programming and life is about getting your expectations right. Disappointment usually occurs when we expect what we want to happen rather than what is likely to happen. Bad things are, of course, likely to happen. Our ability to make our wishes come true depends on our ability to expect bad things and navigate around them.
I do not know if human languages were likely to be based on computing, but the similarities speak for themselves. You may object that computer languages are more likely to be based on human languages, but do you seriously think that God wrote by hand? Even if he did, he was probably disappointed by unfulfilled expectations and wishes that did not come true. At the moment I feel that I am better off than God, but that is merely because I have the good sense to wish for things that I might manage to achieve. Presently, I think that Stril is what I wished it to be, but I still have the good sense to expect disappointment.