A few months back, Mark Guzdial began to ponder a new research question:
I did some literature searches, and found a highly relevant paper: "Task specific programming languages as a first programming language." And the lead author is... me. I wrote this paper with Allison Elliott Tew and Mike McCracken, and published it in 1997. I honestly completely forgot that I had written this paper 22 years ago. Guzdial-past knew things that Guzdial-present does not.
I know this feeling too well. It seems that whenever I look back at an old blog post, especially from the early years, I am surprised to have already thought something, and usually to have thought it better and more deeply than I'm thinking it now! Perhaps this says something about the quality of my thinking now, or the quality of my blogging then. Or maybe it's simply an artifact of time and memory. In any case, stumbling across a link to an ancient blog entry often leads to a few moments of pleasure after an initial bit of disorientation.
On a related note, the fifteenth anniversary of my first blog post passed while I was at Dagstuhl earlier this month. For the first few years, I regularly wrote twelve to twenty posts a month. Then for a few years I settled into a pattern of ten to twelve monthly. Since early 2017, though, I've been in the single digits, with fewer substantial entries. I'm not giving Eugene-2025 much material to look back on.
With a new academic year soon upon us, I hope to write a bit more frequently and a bit more in depth about my programming, my teaching, and my encounters with computer science and the world. I think that will be good for me in many ways. Sometimes, knowing that I will write something encourages me to engage more deeply than I might otherwise. Nearly every time, the writing helps me to make better sense of the encounter. That's one way to make Eugene-Present a little smarter.
As always, I hope that whoever is still reading here finds it worth their time, too.
He applied to switch his major from mathematics to computer science, but the authorities forbade it. "That is what tipped me to accept the idea that perhaps Russia is not the best place for me," he says. "When they wouldn't allow me to study computer science."
-- Sergey Aleynikov, as told to Michael Lewis and reported in Chapter 5 of Flash Boys.
In You Are Here, Ben Hunt writes:
You know what I miss most about the world before Amazon? I miss going to the library and looking up a book in the card catalog, searching the stacks for the book in question, and then losing myself in the experience of discovery AROUND the book I was originally searching for. It's one of the best feelings in the world, and I'm not sure that my children have ever felt it. I haven't felt it in at least 20 years.
My daughters, now in their mid-20s, have felt it. We were a library family, not a bookstore family or an Amazon family. Beginning as soon as they could follow picture books, we spent countless hours at the public library in our town and the one in the neighboring city. We took the girls to Story Time and to other activities, but mostly we went to read and wander and select a big stack of books to take home. The books we took home never lasted as long as we thought they would, so back we'd go.
I still wander the stacks myself, both at the university library and, less often these days, the local public libraries. I always start with a few books in mind, recommendations gathered from friends and articles I've read, but I usually bring home an unexpected bounty. Every year I find a real surprise or two, books I love but would never have known about if I hadn't let myself browse. Even when I don't find anything surprising to take home, it's worth the time I spend just wandering.
Writing a little code often makes my day better. So does going to the library. Walking among books, starting with a goal and then aimlessly browsing, calms me on days I need calming and invigorates me on days when my energy is down. Some days, it does both at the same time. Hunt is right: It's one of the best feelings in the world. I hope that whatever else modern technology does for our children, it gives them something to rival this feeling.