Thursday, June 28, 2007
The fascination of all things difficult
I've started preparing for fall's classes. Some folks might think that I'm premature, starting before the summer has barely begun. But the performance expectations at Wharton run high and an old coder like me can only meet them if he works harder than anybody else (same reason I could compete with younger consultants back in the day--put in the time and the prep and good things will come your way).
We're updating course content this year to include discussions and labs on a variety of languages. So I've been developing materials in Perl, Python, and Java. I used Python for the first etc (way back in 2001) but haven't touched in since. I had gotten pretty fluent in the language back then. But now it's as if I'd never touched it. I get rusty really fast.
What strikes me (and always does) is just how hard it is to learn a programming language. Experienced programmers always seem to forget that as they bemoan the moronic newbie.
That and how addictive learning languages is. Very strange.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Oh well.....
Summer is when I read fiction My tastes run to Charles Bukowski, Cormac McCarthy, and Robert Coover. But I also while away some of my hours with blue chip writers (as long as they stay away from stories of anguished academics and middle class angst).
From Richard Powers's Plowing the Dark:
Steve (poet wannabe turned computer programmer):
I lied to get into this business in the first place. Told them I knew C++ when I didn't know it from B--. But it turns out I know this stuff in my sleep. Born to it. Code is everything I thought poetry was, back when we were in school. Clean, xpressive,urgent, all-encompassing. Fourteen lines can open up to fill the available universe.
Steve again, looking for artist to provide content:
We're all coders and chrome monkeys. A bunch of logic monsters, trying to make walk-in, graphical worlds. We need someone who can see.
Two things:
First, I've been noticing for quite a while that the content of a lot of electronic writing is pretty bad (affectations can be dangerous), but have learned not to share that sentiment anytime I have an audience (unlike here where I have 4 or 5 readers). We do need people who can see, but often refuse to admit it--almost as much as they think they can actually program.
Second, when the prize winners start talking about program code as art, it just might be time to start doing something else.
