Feeling of Computing

My guest this week, Aidan Cuniffee, is the founder of two startups in this space, first Dropsource and now Optic. Aidan and I discuss the trade-offs between creating tools for developers vs non-programmers. We also get to hear some of the upcomming features to expect from Optic. We finish off the interview with a fun theoretical discussion of notation, representation, conciseness and learnability.

http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/21

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Jason Brennan is a Canadian computer scientist focused on education and computing. He’s worked at Hopscotch and Khan Academy. We discussed his experiences building multiple programming language platforms, the incomprehensibly large vision of Alan Kay, and his new project Beach.

http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/20

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Like many of us, Joe Cohen fell in love with HyperCard. Three years ago, he founded Universe to re-imagine HyperCard for the modern day. In this interview, Joe walks us through his initial vision for Universe, and the pivots along the way. It's a refreshing story about balancing pie-in-the-sky vision with shorter-term customer needs. 

You can find the demo videos that Joe references here: http://futureofcoding.org/19-building-universe-joe-cohen.html

Most importantly, you can download Universe for iPhone here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/universe-build-a-website/id1211437633

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Excited to be back after sickness and vacation! 

The notes for this episode can be found here: http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/18-research-recap-nine.html

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Many of you may have never heard of Bubble.is. That's because they don't build for developers. They build for business people who need to create technology but can't afford to work with developers. Over the past four years, Emmanual and his cofounder Josh have bootstrapped their drag-and-drop website builder into a profitable business.

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Back in action after my two-week, sore-throat-induced hiatus, I reflect on my work over the past weeks on my Life Plan and Work Plan. If you make it to the end of this episode, you’ll also get some off-the-cuff tips for ergonomic workstation design.

You can view the notes for this episode here: futureofcoding.org/episodes/16-research-recap-eight-life-and-work-planning.html

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Scott Mueler is the founder of UCode, an after school coding program in California, which he created after teaching his then six-year-old son Ken to code. Scott tells us about how he developed his parenting/teaching/curricular philosophy, and how all educators and parents can apply these principles to raise geniueses of their own.

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Inspired by Juan Benet (and Elon Musk), I zoomed out last week and thought about my "master plan" for this project. You can see a detailed outline for this episode with links here: http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/14-research-recap-six-master-planning.html

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Most people consider ML-based langauges like Elm hard enough to learn as an adult. But according to Professor Christopher Anand of McMaster University, they work really well to introduce Computer Science to children, starting in 4th grade! In this episode, Christopher and I explore the difference between alegbraic thinking and computational (or sequential) thinking, and why this is incredibly relevant today as the "coding for all" movement gains traction.

You can view the notes for this episode online at http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/13-teaching-elm-to-4th-graders-christopher-anand.html

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The last two weeks were all about CycleJS. In order to create visual spreadsheet metaphors for CycleJS stream combinators, I need to have a better understanding of how CycleJS works, and so I played around with it by building a CycleJS Flappy bird. I also spend time recently playing with spreadsheets and Clay. 

You can read more at my journal (futureofcoding.org/journal).

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/feelingofcomputing

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