|
|
|
| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 01 2013 @ 05:44 PM EST |
Hmmm, yesterday clicking on the Newspick link gave 404, this morning
clicking on your link gave 404, now four hours later it works. Must be
holiday fairies on the wires.
I've listened to the linked 13 minute talk by Tom Armitage, which
referred to the home computer boom of the 1980s, and
>> It's worth remembering that much of what emerged in that era
came from autodidacts. <<
My liberal arts education didn't prevent me from progressing and
enjoying a career in radio communications and sound recording.
Even the introduction of digital technology couldn't avoid the analog
inputs and outputs. Interests such as cooking, gardening, even
carpentry, allow some latitude to vary the inputs and obtain
acceptable variation in the ouputs. Living human languages
have alternative meanings, comparative adjectives, flexibility.
I've had no trouble learning sufficient French and Chinese to
converse with native speakers and read a newspaper.
My attempts at learning computer languages have mostly been
exercises in frustration.* There were no shades of grey, at least
not at beginner's level. The black and white rules allowed no black,
blacker, or blackest. Armitage described computer languages as
being primarily to communicate the programmer's intent to
other humans, then ultimately to a computer. My dispute then
is that computer languages are often constructed by people with
strange skills in human linguistics. Far from freedom to think,
I found myself constrained to think exactly like the autodidact
who invented that particular language.
* One exception, I found moderate success and enjoyment
using HyperTalk, used in the Macintosh application HyperCard.
In a long answer to the only question following the talk he said
>> I don't think there are silver bullets to this, I don't think
there's a magic device. The Raspberry Pi is complex and fernickety,
and a bit weird and it's still many orders of magnitude more complex
than the 80s home computers that we reminisce about. ...
Having owned one I wouldn't be super excited about teaching
a course with it. <<
He went on to expound the virtues of good teachers,
good maths, good literacy.
So, what happened to Mayor Bloomberg's resolution?
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
