Doing Nothing

In general a program has to react to many different situations, some of them practically unpredictable. Sometimes it is better for a program not to become active at all, maybe even to crash down, than to do something that would have bad consequences. So doing nothing remains basically an alternative worth to be taken into account. It is part of each program’s spectrum of possible actions.

As we have noticed before, doing nothing is also fundamental in the sense of interrupting the flow for modulations or other actions to become effective.

In the end, both forms of inactivity are equal. They constitute the space between periods of activity. So they allow that activity to do — and thus to be! — the right thing in the right place at the right time.