This is the first post in the Tech Tuesday cycle on programming. Let’s begin with a simple observation: even though various human languages are quite different from each other they cover much of the same territory – the human experience. We have words for food and activities and threats and so on. There are different words in different languages and sometimes even the symbol set is entirely different (I am struggling to remember Mandarin for our upcoming China trip). But despite those differe...

This is the first post in the Tech Tuesday cycle on programming. Let’s begin with a simple observation: even though various human languages are quite different from each other they cover much of the same territory – the human experience. We have words for food and activities and threats and so on. There are different words in different languages and sometimes even the symbol set is entirely different (I am struggling to remember Mandarin for our upcoming China trip). But despite those differe...

The purpose of Tech Tuesdays is to provide non-technical employees or founders of startups with background on how technology works so that they can better communicate with engineers and also better understand technological constraints and opportunities. With that in mind I will take a fairly different approach to programming from say Codecademy or Udacity which tackle hands on code writing. I will instead try to provide a lot of context and explain terminology. You should be able to get a fai...

The purpose of Tech Tuesdays is to provide non-technical employees or founders of startups with background on how technology works so that they can better communicate with engineers and also better understand technological constraints and opportunities. With that in mind I will take a fairly different approach to programming from say Codecademy or Udacity which tackle hands on code writing. I will instead try to provide a lot of context and explain terminology. You should be able to get a fai...

When investing in consumer services, we try to be active users of the services. That tends to provide a fair bit of insight about what is working and what is not (as long as one keeps in mind that one may not be the exact target user!). To do something similar for our more developer directed investments, I have long been meaning to build a little project using MongoDB and Twilio. But usually the extremely rare cycles that I have available for code go into fixing something on DailyLit. Over La...

When investing in consumer services, we try to be active users of the services. That tends to provide a fair bit of insight about what is working and what is not (as long as one keeps in mind that one may not be the exact target user!). To do something similar for our more developer directed investments, I have long been meaning to build a little project using MongoDB and Twilio. But usually the extremely rare cycles that I have available for code go into fixing something on DailyLit. Over La...

I am going to my kids’ school this morning to meet with the head of the computer lab, the principal and the district’s main computer person to talk about Scratch (that is assuming it stops snowing!). The school is beginning to take first steps in teaching Scratch and I want to convince them to step up the pace. I firmly believe that learning how to make computers/robots do things (rather than just do things with computers/robots) will be a critical skill going forward. Scratch is wonderful fo...

I am going to my kids’ school this morning to meet with the head of the computer lab, the principal and the district’s main computer person to talk about Scratch (that is assuming it stops snowing!). The school is beginning to take first steps in teaching Scratch and I want to convince them to step up the pace. I firmly believe that learning how to make computers/robots do things (rather than just do things with computers/robots) will be a critical skill going forward. Scratch is wonderful fo...

Maybe I should have started the whole Tech Tuesday series with a post on programming since that’s why computers were created in the first place! In fact, thinking about programming in many ways precedes the availability of actual computers to carry out those programs. At the time that Babbage was dreaming up his Analytical Engine, Lady Ada started to formulate how a general purpose machine would be programmed. That was almost 100 years before the first truly programmable machines were actuall...

Maybe I should have started the whole Tech Tuesday series with a post on programming since that’s why computers were created in the first place! In fact, thinking about programming in many ways precedes the availability of actual computers to carry out those programs. At the time that Babbage was dreaming up his Analytical Engine, Lady Ada started to formulate how a general purpose machine would be programmed. That was almost 100 years before the first truly programmable machines were actuall...

I love Vernor Vinge’s concept of a “programmer-archeologist” (A Deepness In the Sky, he also coined “programmer-at-arms”) as someone who digs through the layers of existing systems to understand why and how stuff works. I was reminded of this over the weekend, as I worked through some old code of my own and that from a bunch of other developers on DailyLit. My exposure to “software archeology” goes as far as back as the first time I earned money from programming. I was 17 and had just come ba...

I love Vernor Vinge’s concept of a “programmer-archeologist” (A Deepness In the Sky, he also coined “programmer-at-arms”) as someone who digs through the layers of existing systems to understand why and how stuff works. I was reminded of this over the weekend, as I worked through some old code of my own and that from a bunch of other developers on DailyLit. My exposure to “software archeology” goes as far as back as the first time I earned money from programming. I was 17 and had just come ba...

During the last Tech Tuesday we talked about the syntax of programming languages as part of the cycle on programming. That’s a term you will hear frequently in no small part because when you get it wrong the computer will complain about it with a “syntax error.” Today’s topic is much more elusive and less talked about: semantics or what a program “means.” The “means” is in quotation marks because paraphrasing Bill Clinton, the answer depends on what the meaning of the word “means” is. Yes, se...

During the last Tech Tuesday we talked about the syntax of programming languages as part of the cycle on programming. That’s a term you will hear frequently in no small part because when you get it wrong the computer will complain about it with a “syntax error.” Today’s topic is much more elusive and less talked about: semantics or what a program “means.” The “means” is in quotation marks because paraphrasing Bill Clinton, the answer depends on what the meaning of the word “means” is. Yes, se...

Last week on Tech Tuesday, I ran the second reader survey to figure out what to write about next. I have to admit that I was a bit anxious about the results as I realized that I personally favored one of the topics – an overview of programming. So I was thrilled to see the following chart: Among nearly 150 responses, an overview of programming received almost half the votes. Somewhat to my surprise though, the theory of computer science was a pretty meaningful runner up with about one third o...

Last week on Tech Tuesday, I ran the second reader survey to figure out what to write about next. I have to admit that I was a bit anxious about the results as I realized that I personally favored one of the topics – an overview of programming. So I was thrilled to see the following chart: Among nearly 150 responses, an overview of programming received almost half the votes. Somewhat to my surprise though, the theory of computer science was a pretty meaningful runner up with about one third o...

Since it’s been a couple of weeks first off a quick reminder that we are in the middle of a Tech Tuesday cycle on programming. We left off learning about literals, constants and variables. If you don’t remember, now is probably a good time to briefly look back at it. As you do, you will notice that the examples involve both numbers, e.g. 42, and text, e.g. “Bill Gates.” In the last post these appear as literals and as values of named constants or variables. As humans we bring a lot of knowled...

Since it’s been a couple of weeks first off a quick reminder that we are in the middle of a Tech Tuesday cycle on programming. We left off learning about literals, constants and variables. If you don’t remember, now is probably a good time to briefly look back at it. As you do, you will notice that the examples involve both numbers, e.g. 42, and text, e.g. “Bill Gates.” In the last post these appear as literals and as values of named constants or variables. As humans we bring a lot of knowled...

Last Tech Tuesday, I introduced programming languages by making a series of analogies to human languages. We will continue the programming cycle today by deepening that analogy with regard to syntax. Syntax is the set of rules that describe how you can put together the words of a language to form a sentence. For instance, part of the syntax of English is that we separate words with a space insteadofputtingthemrightnextoeachother. Another part of the syntax of English is that we end sentences ...

Last Tech Tuesday, I introduced programming languages by making a series of analogies to human languages. We will continue the programming cycle today by deepening that analogy with regard to syntax. Syntax is the set of rules that describe how you can put together the words of a language to form a sentence. For instance, part of the syntax of English is that we separate words with a space insteadofputtingthemrightnextoeachother. Another part of the syntax of English is that we end sentences ...