Nat Friedman » 2003 » July http://nat.org/blog Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:12:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 31 July 2003 http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/31-july-2003/ http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/31-july-2003/#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2003 22:00:00 +0000 Nat Friedman http://www-new.nat.org/blog/?p=603 Approximate ages of various of my friends when they wrote their first code (not counting copying from books):


Joe Shaw 4 TRS-80 BASIC
Phil Schwan 5 Tandy 1000 QuickBasic
Graydon Hoare 5 C64 BASIC
Jimmy Krehl 6 C64 BASIC
Nat Friedman 6 Apple ][ Logo/BASIC
Mike Shaver 7 C64 BASIC
Chris Blizzard 9 Franklin 1600 Logo/BASIC
Luis Villa 9 Apple ][ BASIC
Jacob Berkman 10 Apple ][ Logo/BASIC
Miguel de Icaza 12 C64 BASIC
Miles 12 286 Pascal
Alex Graveley 15 Linux C++

Summary of our IRC conversation on the subject:

<graydon> Nat: do you think today's kids -- with their massive overexposure to computers, but with crappy programming environments -- will learn to code earlier or later?
<Nat> graydon: html + css + javascript is first now
<Nat> but at 4 or 5 you don't have shit to publish
<Nat> you want to make the computer do neat things
<graydon> maybe a very popular MMORPG client with an embedded scripting system. in-game programming is a good hook, like MUDs.
<Nat> good call y0
<shaver> yeah
<boc_yyz> i would have started earlier if leisure suit larry had some sort of programmable element to it

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[photo]
During my dashboard demo at OSCON.
]]> http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/20-july-2003/feed/ 0 19 July 2003 http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/19-july-2003/ http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/19-july-2003/#comments Fri, 18 Jul 2003 22:00:00 +0000 Nat Friedman http://www-new.nat.org/blog/?p=601 The power just went out in my building, causing my network to die (but not my laptop). So I was like: awe crap. I guess I’ll just watch TV.

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]]> http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/7-july-2003/feed/ 0 4 July 2003 http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/4-july-2003/ http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/4-july-2003/#comments Thu, 03 Jul 2003 22:00:00 +0000 Nat Friedman http://www-new.nat.org/blog/?p=599 I just confirmed this.

It took me about 5 minutes to even try it though, since “Screensaver” was renamed to “Screen Effects” in the new system preferences panel in OS X, and I couldn’t figure out how to turn on locking for the life of me.

]]> http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/4-july-2003/feed/ 0 3 July 2003 http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/3-july-2003/ http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/3-july-2003/#comments Wed, 02 Jul 2003 22:00:00 +0000 Nat Friedman http://www-new.nat.org/blog/?p=598 These photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson are probably the best portraits I’ve ever seen. I especially like the one of Oppenheimer, with the little shards of light coming into the room.

. . .

Yup. August it is.

]]> http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/3-july-2003/feed/ 0 2 July 2003 http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/2-july-2003/ http://nat.org/blog/2003/07/2-july-2003/#comments Tue, 01 Jul 2003 22:00:00 +0000 Nat Friedman http://www-new.nat.org/blog/?p=597 Just discovered Bart Decrem’s open source desktop news clippings list.

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