Whats the relationship between writing code and writing English?
In describing Stevie’s discovery that code combined action and meaning, I really was attempting to convey my own sense of discovery. I taught myself to program in the late seventies, while an undergraduate at the University of Illinois. There was a large precursor network system called PLATO that was used as a teaching system. I took my undergraduate chemistry, calculus, and physics courses on the PLATO system, but while I was working on the problem sets, I got even more intrigued by what was under the hood: all the human and mechanical apparatus needed to get the lessons up on the screen in the first place. And that’s the same kind of thing we learn when we learn how to read poetry — the actual diction of words on the page is just the tip of the iceberg. Do you still program? Oh, yes, I do. But a lot of the empty areas of the map feel filled in now, so it’s trickier to get the same recreational thrill. High-level visual programming languages let you do in three minutes what you used
