Chad Whitacre chadwhitacre

Last night I had my first experience teaching programming to beginners. The students had read the first three sections of the HTML 4 specification, and during the class session we installed a text editor and web browser, and started building web pages from scratch.

Based on the questions they asked and the discussion we had, I decided that it might help to zoom out a level and frame the concept of “programming” in general terms. This is what I came up with.

Computers are a tool to extend our power of reason.

Reason can be thought of as a processing of symbols according to rules.

Testing public gists.

A friend of mine recently started publishing on Svbtle, a super-classy, invite-only blogging platform. I like the super-classy part, not so much the invite-only part. Can we have classy and open?

The Promise of Svbtle

The only way I get to see Svbtle's editing interface is when its creator, Dustin Curtis, deigns to show me. Turns out I love it. It feels like Apple to me. And like Apple, Svbtle whiffs of totalitarianism. Are these two traits, high quality and crushing control, inseparable? From Dustin:

I’ve decided to open [Svbtle] up to a small number of vetted bloggers. At least at first. The goal is simple: when you see the Svbtle design, you should know that the content is guaranteed to be great.

When I see the Svbtle design, I think, "Gee, I wish I were part of this elite club." If it were really about the content, Svbtle would be more like The Economist. It would [downplay the identity](http://www.quora.com/The-Economist/Will-The-Econ

I studied Greek in college, which meant I was temping soon after. My best gig was in an internal medicine office, where I sat in a closet calling insurance companies all day, and the ladies teased me for being a virgin, and also thought I was quaintly cute. Two of them attended my wedding.

In the closet, while calling the insurance companies, I stared at an old DOS medical records system. Each screen was a different human, a person, reduced to an ASCII medical records profile along familiar axes: name, age, gender, race, and then medical history. By the end of my stint I had an image of a reconstituted person, a human, appear (to my conscious mind) instantly upon switching screens. This was late 1999, the age of The Matrix, and I identified with Mouse, the geeky young character who scans the falling green characters and cognizes the world itself. Martha Schwartz, old lady, 309 lbs., sitting on her couch with a walker in front of her, tube

	class Counter(object):
	visitors = 0
	counter = Counter()
	^L
	counter.visitors += 1
	^L
	howdy, visitor number {{ visitors }} !

	#!/usr/bin/env python
	import twitter
	import simplejson

	api = twitter.Api( consumer_key=''
	, consumer_secret=''
	, access_token_key=''
	, access_token_secret=''
	)

	from datadirect.dataset.aggregation_mixin import AggregationMixin


	def test_aggregation_mixin_is_instantiable():
	actual = AggregationMixin().__class__
	assert actual is AggregationMixin, actual

	"""Used when a person needed to go to Balanced to verify their merchant details
	they are redirected here after the fact.
	"""
	from aspen import Response
	from gittip import billing

	#=========================================================================== ^L

	if user.ANON:
	raise Response(404)

	"""Used when a person needed to go to Balanced to verify their merchant details
	they are redirected here after the fact.
	"""
	from aspen import Response
	from gittip import billing

	#=========================================================================== ^L

	if user.ANON:
	raise Response(404)