Quote from an email I received from a prospective PhD student: I get the impression that if doing a PhD is really going to help push me forward on this, I’ll have to be working closely with people from that whole milieu surrounding the ’80s/’90s Common Lisp scene and the heyday of PARC. There seem to […]

This is a post about CS education. It is prompted by a series of posts by Mark Guzdial in which he criticizes the pervasive belief among CS educators that when it comes to programming, there’s not much an instructor can do: some students get it, others don’t; it’s all in genetics or other external factors […]

I just came back from a week at Hacker School in New York — they invited me to join them as a resident. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and, before I forget, here are my impressions and a bit of a comparison with the more traditional educational programs that I’m used to.