I was really hoping the Wikipedia article on Roller Coasters was better. I wanted to write a piece of prose paralleling roller coasters and programming languages, but unfortunately, I have such little info to go on (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_coaster" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_coaster</a>).<p>I feel like roller coasters started because people wanted to go fast, and this crazy death contraption was the only way how. Subsequently, ride operators, in order to avoid the death of their patrons, advised them not to stick their limbs outside of the car. Unfortunately, this mechanism only reduced injuries, but far from eliminated them. Not only do accidents occur because of the actions of the riders themselves, but ride operators can pose introduce risk not only by malice, but negligence. In extremely rare cases, riders can be injured by compiler failures.<p>Roller coaster operators soon learned that these contraptions were fundamentally unsafe, and the only way to induce safety was if the systems which drove the coaster had safety as a fundamental concern. Therefore they introduced these things like "PLCs" -- a type of computer to make sure the operators could only do so much to endanger the riders. In addition, by following the basic rules of physics at build time of the coaster they further increased safety. Since people have stopped building coasters that relied on the rider's healthy sense of caution, and the operator's awareness of safety, they've become one of the safest ways to enjoy oneself.
Or at least this is how I was hoping the story went.