That's pretty much what I mean. The point is that if you don't understand the structurally required properties well enough to describe the characteristics of a digital amp meter with a polling subroutine, saying that you'll hardwire the digital amp meter doesn't help very much. There's a hardwired version which is moderately harder to subvert on the presumption of small design errors, but first you have to be able to describe what the software does. Consider also that anything which can affect the outside environment can construct copies of itself minus hardware constraints, construct an agent that reaches back in and modifies the hardware, etc. If you can't describe how not do to this in software, 'hardwiring' won't help - the rules change somewhat when you're dealing with intelligent agents.