Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh yes, I remember you and your eminently googlable uname! I'm just glad that nobody can google the message I sent to the LISP@AI mailing list asking how to set the value of a variable. Soooooo embarrassing! I'm sure KMP's eyes rolled up to the back of his head, but then he took the time to help me out with TEACH-LISP (which Jerry Pournelle was ignorant enough to cite in a not-friendly light when he condemned LISP in…
I'm still klotz, though I use unix now.
I heard an alternative fact that Kent Pitman develop a New Implementation of Lisp in which NIL equals T, which inspired many other popular languages like PHP and JavaScript to adopt alternative definitions of equality, based on the insight that all objects are equal, but some objects are more equal than others.
And speaking of bright 12-year-olds, I heard that David Vinayak Wallace was the youngest kid to ever have his own office at the MIT-AI Lab, and as a small brown child he once schooled Jerry Pournelle for free [1]:
Date: Sunday, 2 January 1983, 22:48-EST
From: David Vinayak Wallace
Subject: The changing face of Micro-computing...
Date: 31 December 1982 04:00-EST
From: Jerry E. Pournelle
(I re-ordered some of your statements)
The notion that "It's too late for the parents" is
goofy. Bill and Sibyl Grieb have packed classes at everywoman's
Village on using computers; they teach CP/M and customization
and all that.
Patience: it took far longer for the "average citizen"
to learn enough mechanics to be able to be comfortable using
cars than it is taking for people to get used to computers.
I think this example shows why it IS too late. You can always find a
few exceptions to the rule; these exceptions are a tiny (>.5%) part
of the actual computer user. I doesn't take mechanical knowledge to
drive a car, it takes mechanical knowledge to modify or repair an
automobile. most people (me included) would rather buy a vanilla
car and just have it work all the time. I change the oil (more than
most people do), but have a mechanic do the real work.
The problem with adult learners are the ones I had: no one seems
to know how to explain things in English. You have to learn a
lot more than you really need to in order to be able to do much
of anything. Some of us, though, are trying to change that, and
a few of us are not only doing something about it, but getting
paid to.
The High Priest mentality in which one accepts whatever a highly
paid computer technician tells you, is dying away in industry
already, and the micro world ain't going to let it get a foot
hold...
I'm biased, but I don't think this will really work. You can't
discuss complex concepts without the proper language. I agree that
there is a bit of High Priest mentality and that there is no good
effort to teach the JARGON, but every "normal language" explanation
of anything having to do with computers comes out muddled,
long-winded, and ultimately, unclear..
Some of us even do it for free.
david