See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Moments of inspiration
It was sometime in 1997, I think. One day I was flipping channels on my TV, and I happened upon an interview with a man who fascinated me. I didn’t recognize him. It was on a local cable channel. I caught the interview in the middle, and [...]
Archive for the ‘Programming’ Category
My journey, Part 5
Posted in History, Programming, tagged C++, career, civilization, simulation, technology on January 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
My journey, Part 4
Posted in History, Programming, Technology and Software, tagged Alto, Apple, career, computer history, Macintosh, Smalltalk, software development, Xerox PARC on January 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
The real world
Each year while I was in school I looked for summer internships, but had no luck. The economy sucked. In my final year of school I started looking for permanent work, and I felt almost totally lost. I asked CS grads about it. They told me “You’ll never find [...]
My journey, Part 3
Posted in Education, History, Programming, tagged computer as medium, computer history, computer science on December 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
See Part 1, Part 2
College
I went to Colorado State University in 1988. As I went through college I forgot about my fantasies of computers changing society. I was focused on writing programs that were more sophisticated than I had ever written before, appreciating architectural features of software and emulating them in my own projects, and learning [...]
My journey, Part 2
Posted in History, Programming, tagged american computer science league, computer history, fizzbuzz, Programming, the computer generation, women in computer science on December 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
See Part 1
A sense of history
“Computer Generation”, May 3, 1982, Time Magazine
I had never seen a machine before that I could change so easily (relative to other machines). I had this sense that these computers represented something big. I didn’t know what it was. It was just a general feeling I got from reading computer [...]
My journey, Part 1
Posted in Programming, tagged computer, media, Programming on December 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This series of posts has been brewing within me for more than a year, though for some reason it just never felt like the right time to talk about it. Two months ago I found The Machine That Changed The World online, a mini-series I had seen about 15 years ago. I was going to [...]
The computer as medium
Posted in Education, History, Programming, Squeak, Technology and Software, tagged alan kay, chris crawford, computer, culture, etoys, gutenberg, History, media, medium, printing press, Programming, societal influence, Squeak, squeakers, squeakland, writing on September 14, 2008 | 13 Comments »
In my guest post on Paul Murphy’s blog called “The PC vision was lost from the get go” I spoke to the concept, which Alan Kay had going back to the 1970s, that the personal computer is a new medium, like the book at the time the technology for the printing press was brought to Europe, [...]
The culture of “air guitar”
Posted in Art, Education, Programming, tagged air guitar, Education, guitar hero, Programming, south park on June 10, 2008 | 6 Comments »
Since I started listening to Alan Kay’s ideas I’ve kept hearing him use the phrase “air guitar” to describe what he sees as shallow ideas, both in terms of educational and industry practice, which are promoted by a pop culture. Kay is a musician, among other things, so I can see where he’d come up [...]
Is OOP all it’s cracked up to be?: My guest post on ZDNet
Posted in Analysis, Programming, Squeak, Technology and Software, tagged .Net, C++, History, Java, OOP, Smalltalk on June 2, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Paul Murphy saw fit to give me another guest spot on his blog, called “The tattered history of OOP”, talking about the history of OOP practice, where the idea came from, and how industry has implemented it. If you’ve been reading my blog this will probably be review. I’m just spreading the message a little [...]
The Joy of Squeak
Posted in Education, Programming, Squeak on March 17, 2008 | 3 Comments »
I found this through The Weekly Squeak. Randal Schwartz demo’d the current Squeakland version of Squeak/EToys on Leo Laporte’s show, “The Lab” (video link). I just think it’s neat it’s getting some mainstream recognition.
Schwartz and Laporte gave a quick history of Smalltalk at the start, and they told it pretty accurately. For the uninitiated it may go by too [...]
Squeak by Example 2.0 is out
Posted in Programming, Squeak on March 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The 2nd edition of Squeak by Example is out now (h/t to The Weekly Squeak for this). Like the first edition, it’s a book released as a PDF under the Creative Commons Share-Alike license. You can also get a hardcopy edition of it for $20.10 USD. They also welcome donations. Another tidbit of news is that the [...]
