TITLE: The Spirit of Spelunking
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: October 31, 2023  7:12 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:

 Last month, Gus Mueller
<a href="https://shapeof.com/archives/2023/9/acorn_7.4.3_released.html">
   announced v7.4.3</a>
 of his image-editing tool
<a href="https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/">
   Acorn</a>.
 This release has a fun little extra built in:

<blockquote><em>
 One more super geeky thing I've added is a JavaScript Console:
 <br><br>
 ...
 <br><br>
 This tool is really meant for folks developing plugins in Acorn,
 and it is only accessible from the Command Bar, but a part of me
 absolutely loves pointing out little things like this.  I was
 just chatting with
 <a href="https://inessential.com">Brent Simmons</a>
 the other day at Xcoders how you can't really spelunk in apps
 any more because of all the restrictions that are (justifiably)
 put on recent MacOS releases.  While a console isn't exactly a
 spelunking tool, I still think it's kind of cool and fun and
 maybe someone will discover it accidentally and that will inspire
 them to do stupid and entertaining things like we used to do
 back in the 10.x days.
</em></blockquote>

 I have had JavaScript consoles on my mind a lot in the last few
 weeks.  My students and I have used the developer tools in our
 browsers as part of
 <a href="https://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2023-09.html#e2023-09-22T20_38_53.htm">
    my web development course for non-majors</a>.
 To be honest, I had never used a JavaScript console until this
 summer, when I began preparing for the course in earnest.  REPLs
 are, of course, a big part of the programming background, from
 Lisp to Racket to Ruby to Python, so I took to the console with
 ease and joy.  (My past experience with JavaScript was mostly in
 Node.js, which has its own REPL.)
 
 We just started our fourth week studying JavaScript in class, so
 my students have started getting used to the console.  At the
 outset, it was new to most of them, who have never programmed
 before.  Our attention has now turned to interacting with the DOM
 and manipulating the content of web page.  It's been a lot of fun
 for me.  I'm not sure how it feels for all of my students, though.
 Many came to the course for web design and really enjoy HTML and
 CSS.  JavaScript, on the other hand, is... programming: more
 syntax, more semantics, and a lot of new details just to select,
 say, the third <tt>h3</tt> on the page.

 Sometimes, you just gotta work over the initial hump to sense the
 power and fun.  Some of them are getting there.

 Today I had great fun showing them how to add some simple search
 functionality to a web page.  It was our first big exercise using
 <tt>document.querySelectorAll()</tt> and processing a collection
 of HTML elements.  Soon we'll learn about text fields and buttons
 and events, at which point my
 <a href="https://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/personal/bokonon.html">
    The Books of Bokonon</a>
 will become much more useful to the many readers who still find
 pleasure in it.  Just last night that page got its first modern
 web styling in the form of a CSS style sheet.  For its first
 twenty-four years of existence, it was all 1990s-era HTML and
 pseudo-layout using <tt>&lt;center&gt;</tt>, <tt>&lt;hr&gt;</tt>,
 and <tt>&lt;br&gt;</tt> tags.

 Anyway, I appreciate Gus's excitement at adding a console to Acorn,
 making his tool a place to play as well as work.  Spread the joy.
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