TITLE: A Thousand Feet of Computing
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 29, 2023  7:51 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 Cory Doctorow, in
<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/cory-doctorow-wants-you-to-know-what-computers-can-and-cant-do">
   a recent New Yorker interview</a>
 reminisces about learning to program.  The family had a teletype
 and modem.

<blockquote><em>
 My mom was a kindergarten teacher at the time, and she would bring
 home rolls of brown bathroom hand towels from the kid's bathroom
 at school, and we would feed a thousand feet of paper towel into
 the teletype and I would get a thousand feet of computing after
 school at the end of the day.
</em></blockquote>

 Two things:
 <ul>
 <li> Tsk, tsk, Mom.  Absconding with school supplies, even if for
      a noble cause!  :-)  Fortunately, the statute of limitations
      on pilfering paper hand towels has likely long since passed.  </li>
 <br/>
 <li> I love the idea of doing "a thousand feet of computing" each
      day.  What a wonderful phrase.  With no monitor, the teletype
      churns out paper for every line of code, and every line the
      code produces.  You know what they say: A thousand feet a day
      makes a happy programmer.  </li>
 </ul>

 The entire interview is a good read on the role of computing in
 modern society.  The programmer in me also resonated with this
 quote from Doctorow's 2008 novel, <em>Little Brother</em>:

<blockquote><em>
 If you've never programmed a computer, there's nothing like it
 in the whole world.  It's awesome in the truest sense: it can
 fill you with awe.
</em></blockquote>

 My older daughter recommended <em>Little Brother</em> to me when
 it first came out.  I read many of her recommendations promptly,
 but for some reason this one sits on my shelf unread.  (The PDF
 also sits in my <tt>to-read/</tt> folder, unread.)  I'll move
 it to the top of my list.
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