Interview with Hal Abelson on Code Quarterly

#1

Post by gigamonkey » Thu, Jun 09, 2011, 9:33 PM UTC

Interview with Hal Abelson on Code Quarterly
codequarterly.com

Re: Interview with Hal Abelson on Code Quarterly

#2

Post by ernestipark » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 2:23 AM UTC

Awesome interview that sheds a lot of light on how Abelson thinks programming should be taught. I really wish I could have taken 6.001 instead of 6.01 though as a CS student. I had a bit of an a-ha moment reading about the abstractions Abelson talked about in 6.01, but when I was taking the course, it went straight over my head.

Re: Interview with Hal Abelson on Code Quarterly

#3

Post by bobbles » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 5:47 AM UTC

I dont know if its just my setup of FireFox 4 but this is really difficult to read

Re: Interview with Hal Abelson on Code Quarterly

#4

Post by ipince » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 7:11 AM UTC

we took my ethics and law course, and then dumbed it down so we could teach it at Harvard

Re: Interview with Hal Abelson on Code Quarterly

#5

Post by splittist » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 9:14 AM UTC

If every issue of CQ has an interview of this calibre and quality it's going to be THE essential subscription for the field.

Re: Interview with Hal Abelson on Code Quarterly

#6

Post by signa11 » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 9:24 AM UTC

beautiful: ... I’ve decided that from now on, I should be measuring the quality of my life by the ratio of the amount of time spent programming to the amount of time sitting in meetings.

Re: Interview with Hal Abelson on Code Quarterly

#7

Post by zaph0d » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 9:47 AM UTC

Apart from the great content, I love the typography on the pages. Simple yet elegant. Kudos!

Re: Interview with Hal Abelson on Code Quarterly

#8

Post by chalst » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 10:06 AM UTC

Oh, great to see that Code Quarterly is coming along.

Hal Abelson: My math PhD was in algebraic topology, which had nothing to do with computers. Then I got interested, through thinking about topology, in the relations with distributed computing and that eventually formed a bridge into doing something in computing.

For those wanting to find out a little more about these connections, Herlihy & Rajsbaum, 2000, An Overview of Synchronous Message-Passing and Topology, is a really great place to start.

http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/mph/HerlihyR96/sv.pdf

Re: Interview with Hal Abelson on Code Quarterly

#9

Post by spooneybarger » Sat, Jun 11, 2011, 2:45 PM UTC

bobbles wrote: post #3

I dont know if its just my setup of FireFox 4 but this is really difficult to read

it is really difficult to read. supposedly a redesign of the site it coming plus possibility for pdf and epub which some might appreciate.

in the meantime, i'd suggest using something like readability.