Kindred Code
From Maze
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Learning a program by typing it in may seem more closely to resemble learning to appreciate a language by memorizing lines of poetry. However, the use of imitation to learn a creative skill has a long tradition in the arts, be they primarily written, visual, kinetic, or dramatic. Painters learn to imitate the masters before they create their own works. Dancers learn to dance established steps before they can choreograph. However, rather than drawing an analogy from high art practice, this mode of learning is closer to the practical arts of cooking and the handcraft of needlework. | Learning a program by typing it in may seem more closely to resemble learning to appreciate a language by memorizing lines of poetry. However, the use of imitation to learn a creative skill has a long tradition in the arts, be they primarily written, visual, kinetic, or dramatic. Painters learn to imitate the masters before they create their own works. Dancers learn to dance established steps before they can choreograph. However, rather than drawing an analogy from high art practice, this mode of learning is closer to the practical arts of cooking and the handcraft of needlework. | ||
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| + | Hammurabi | ||
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| + | In the days of iPads, Apps, and, frankly, locked-down graphical user interfaces it is hard to imagine a world where people running a personal computer for the very first time type in programs to learn how the machine works. Perhaps there are always multiple worlds, as users of Unix-based systems continue to seek out the experience of the command line, that icon of user engagement of contact with the system, akin to the sense of the fixed-gear bike, closer contact with the machine. And yet even that example of the immediacy offered by an operating system does not capture BASIC culture. | ||
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| + | Instead of reading blogs about the latest cloud-based software, excited programmers subscribed to magazines that like the recipes in Red Book, served up a regular set of programs to test out by typing them in. This process was especially important on machines without storage capacity. | ||
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| + | It is within that BASIC culture that many of 10 PRINT's kindred programs emerge. | ||
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| + | Hammurabi offers one example. | ||
