I'd argue that. In cars we have a convention about the pedals: the right-most
one (as you're sitting in the driver's seat) will be the gas pedal, the one just
to the left of it will be the brake pedal, and if the car has a clutch then
it'll be to the left of the brake pedal. If I push down on the gas pedal the car
will go faster, and if I push down on the brake pedal the car will slow down. I
don't need to read the instruction manual to know all that, because there's an
accepted interface to those controls that all cars follow.
There may be
different implementations of the braking system. One car may use a hydraulic
master cylinder driven by a push-rod attached to the brake pedal arm, another
may use a pneumatic system with a valve controlled by the brake pedal arm, and
another may have the brake pedal control an electronic sensor and drive the
electric traction motors in reverse depending on how far down the pedal's
depressed to slow the vehicle down. But as a driver I don't have to care about
that because the interface is all the same: the brake pedal's in the same
location and I operate that pedal the same way, and I get the same results
without having to know and adjust for the details of the implementation. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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