Computer programming is typically seen as being an activity that is done by young men of a certain type. Most TV shows (e.g., Silicon Valley) and movies conform to this stereotype. However, its far from the truth; Lady Ada Lovelace is often referred to as the "first computer programmer" and Grace Hopper famously wrote the first compiler and coined the term "computer bug." A YouTube video, shared with my by my colleague Mark Wilson, featuring Megan Smith, the former Google executive recently appointed by President Obama as the Chief Technology Officer of the United States, further debunks this myth.
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Common Lisp The Untold Story
from The Universal Machine http://universal-machine.blogspot.com/
Put the internet to work for you.
The Story Behind Course Builder
Last summer, we ran a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on Power Searching. Soon after, we open sourced Course Builder, the platform that we developed on Google technologies to present the course. Since then, we have released four versions of Course Builder adding features such as user-friendly content development, administrative support, dashboards on student performance and behavior, new assessment types including peer review, accessibility, internationalization, etc. A large number of courses have been hosted on Course Builder, with many more in the pipeline.
This work started with the observation that we have all the component technology one needs to create a platform for delivering a learning experience similar to other MOOCs that were being offered on Coursera and Udacity. So we set about wiring together these components (YouTube, App Engine, Groups, Apps, Google+ and Hangouts, etc.) to create the first version of Course Builder.
As we talked with faculty and others who wanted to create online learning experiences, we saw an opportunity for Course Builder to play an important role in the MOOC space. Our goal is to provide the capability for anyone to create a MOOC or even an “OOC”. We believe that an online environment can be used for a wide variety of education-related activities beyond just the standard university course. We have implemented a feature set that supports this goal.
Our users include not only colleges and universities, but also non-profits and K12 organizations. We host academic courses such as Information Visualization and Game Theory, as well as short courses including Mapping with Google, Digital Learning in K12, YouTube Creator Academy, and Giving with Purpose. Supporting this diversity in users, content and format is why we created Course Builder.
Hosting the platform on App Engine has provided additional capabilities that are essential for our users, particularly colleges and universities. It’s possible to brand a MOOC anyway the user wants. The user also owns the relationship with the student directly, and owns any data that they collect to use anyway they like. Given Course Builder is open source, it is possible to easily add customized features. Add to that App Engine’s scalability, self-managed hosting and the extensible component architecture built into Course Builder, and you have a powerful, flexible platform that can support any number of students and any type of content.
We will continue to support this diverse user base, and work to get even more great teachers and innovative learning designers involved in experimenting in this brave new world of online learning. The potential for positive disruption and change is enormous.
PIXAR Toy Story Partysaurus Rex Full Short
Whats my story
As an implementor of BASIC, where am I coming from?
The home computer, a way back machine - In regards to the BASIC programming language, I think my strongest formative influence comes from working with old home computers. There was something wonderful about these machines that plugged into the family television set. They were simple when compared to computers now, and you could get your mind around them. You could master the whole computer because all of the details fit in a 5x8" spiral bound manual a couple of hundred pages long.
Personal Mastery - Perhaps similarly, I used to work on my own cars. I loved working on old Volkswagen Beetles, and I owned a bunch of them. I knew pretty much everything about the Beetle, and I loved knowing all about it. Its about that feeling you get when you master something. Nowadays I take my cars to the experts because I simply cannot understand the new cars. If it breaks down, I call a tow truck. Its harder to love cars today. This is how computers have become.
Interactivity - Lets see. Just like you can take the parts of an old car and flip them over in your hands, see how they fit together and what makes them tick, programming in BASIC on a home computer was like that. You could stop your program, look at variables (flip them over in your hands, so to speak), execute a little line of code on the fly, and resume execution at any point. If you wanted to mess with the video mode, or tweak the sound, or read/write some memory value, you could. The very nature of the machine permitted it. There is was, all laid out before you like clay in your hands and it was not so vast that you were overwhelmed by it all.
BASIC today - So I really feel that if at all possible BASIC programming should still be like this, but it mostly is not. Most BASIC languages today are compilers. This means that once you start to run your program, you cannot just stop it and tweak it. You cant change the code of a running program without needing to restart the program from scratch. In addition, the huge functionality of modern operating systems inspires programming language implementors to continually make their BASIC languages bigger and bigger. This is an artificial barrier to personal mastery.
The reverse 80/20 rule - Okay, since only 20 percent of the Windows operating system functionality is needed 80 percent of the time, why create a programming language that tries to embrace all of it? Home computers did most of what a computer is useful for, and compared to computers today they didnt do much of anything. The reality is that an awful lot of useful things can be done with a very small language.
Small is beautiful - Balance is also beautiful. BASIC should try to strike a balance between being small, and also supporting the most often needed features of Windows, the Mac OS or whatever operating system it runs on.
Aesthetics matter - How does your BASIC language look, like BASIC? Im not kidding. Many programming languages today that call themselves BASIC dont look anything like BASIC. Tacking ideas and syntax onto BASIC from other languages only complicates things. If it doesnt look like BASIC, it isnt BASIC. I dont mean this in a snobby way. I just think that the feel of the original language is worth preserving because it had a nice simple down to earth quality. Removing that quality also removes some of the fun, and I dont see why we need to do that. ;-)
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The home computer, a way back machine - In regards to the BASIC programming language, I think my strongest formative influence comes from working with old home computers. There was something wonderful about these machines that plugged into the family television set. They were simple when compared to computers now, and you could get your mind around them. You could master the whole computer because all of the details fit in a 5x8" spiral bound manual a couple of hundred pages long.
Personal Mastery - Perhaps similarly, I used to work on my own cars. I loved working on old Volkswagen Beetles, and I owned a bunch of them. I knew pretty much everything about the Beetle, and I loved knowing all about it. Its about that feeling you get when you master something. Nowadays I take my cars to the experts because I simply cannot understand the new cars. If it breaks down, I call a tow truck. Its harder to love cars today. This is how computers have become.
Interactivity - Lets see. Just like you can take the parts of an old car and flip them over in your hands, see how they fit together and what makes them tick, programming in BASIC on a home computer was like that. You could stop your program, look at variables (flip them over in your hands, so to speak), execute a little line of code on the fly, and resume execution at any point. If you wanted to mess with the video mode, or tweak the sound, or read/write some memory value, you could. The very nature of the machine permitted it. There is was, all laid out before you like clay in your hands and it was not so vast that you were overwhelmed by it all.
BASIC today - So I really feel that if at all possible BASIC programming should still be like this, but it mostly is not. Most BASIC languages today are compilers. This means that once you start to run your program, you cannot just stop it and tweak it. You cant change the code of a running program without needing to restart the program from scratch. In addition, the huge functionality of modern operating systems inspires programming language implementors to continually make their BASIC languages bigger and bigger. This is an artificial barrier to personal mastery.
The reverse 80/20 rule - Okay, since only 20 percent of the Windows operating system functionality is needed 80 percent of the time, why create a programming language that tries to embrace all of it? Home computers did most of what a computer is useful for, and compared to computers today they didnt do much of anything. The reality is that an awful lot of useful things can be done with a very small language.
Small is beautiful - Balance is also beautiful. BASIC should try to strike a balance between being small, and also supporting the most often needed features of Windows, the Mac OS or whatever operating system it runs on.
Aesthetics matter - How does your BASIC language look, like BASIC? Im not kidding. Many programming languages today that call themselves BASIC dont look anything like BASIC. Tacking ideas and syntax onto BASIC from other languages only complicates things. If it doesnt look like BASIC, it isnt BASIC. I dont mean this in a snobby way. I just think that the feel of the original language is worth preserving because it had a nice simple down to earth quality. Removing that quality also removes some of the fun, and I dont see why we need to do that. ;-)
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