Month: April 2012

The day I lost a child on the Tube

From the Teacher Network Blog on The Guardian:

Twenty years ago our blogger lost one of his pupils on the London Underground and didn’t even report the incident to the child’s mother or his headteacher… fast forward to the present day and it’s a very different story

A little old in Internet-time, but I just got around to reading it, and it’s a fun read with a very insightful conclusion that’s not “OMG look at kids and parents nowadays ughhhh”.

When I first read the title, though, I thought it was “the day I lost a child on YouTube”. THE HORROR

Vim adventures

An interactive web game to help you become familiar with Vim commands. Very nicely done!

I found it a little frustrating to get through because I know the basics, but the player is made to “unlock” commands such as w and b. Worse, the first “maze” you navigate with hjkl encourages you to mash those buttons (can’t put a number in front to repeat commands). That said, though, very fun and great production values. “YIPPEE”, as they say.

C’est la Z: Anyone can cook

Mike Zamansky on the recent spate of online programming education offerings, specifically the more “vocational” ones such as Codecademy:

‘The premise seems to be that anyone can code and that everyone should code. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I keep coming back to the question, “what’s the endgame?”‘

This post articulates the fear I’ve been having about trying to make programming more accessible to everyone: to what end? For users, is there any value in this knowledge? (Conversely, though, what’s the value in learning basic science and humanities for “users”, i.e. people existing in the physical world and society?)