learning-picostack

Sacrament Meeting

The programmer, now

Imagine you are in the Bishopric. You are assigned to conduct a sacrament meeting next Sunday.

As you plan you are deciding what will happen later. It will happen next Sunday morning.

You write down what will happen. What you write is called a program.

A sacrament meeting program has a standard template. You follow that template as you write the program.

As you write you fill in the details such as

and so on until the program is complete.

The conductor, later

Sunday morning comes.

The prelude music is playing.

The starting time arrives and you stand up at the pulpit and announce the opening hymn and name the person chosen to give the invocation. You sit down.

The person chosen to direct the congregational singing conducts as the congregation sings the chosen hymn. Then the person chosen to give the invocation gives the invocation.

You stand at the pulpit and make the announcements.

And so on until the program is complete.

Notice

There are two times.

There is the time when you are writing the program. When you have finished writing, the program is complete.

Later there is a time when you are running the program (as you conduct the meeting). When the meeting is over, the program is complete.

The program is written in the language of the congregation. It follows the format of a sacrament meeting.

Notice

This kind of program is written once and used once.

When it happens it runs to completion and is over. It will not be used again.

If multiple copies of the program have been printed some of them may later be destroyed but some may last for a long time. The program continues to exist but will never run again.

Excercises

  1. What happens if you aren’t the one who assigns the person for some role in the program and you don’t find out by the time you are finished writing the program and it needs to be printed?
  2. Describe the difference between the two meanings of “the program is complete”.
  3. Can you think of a situation where the same program might be used more than just once?