Prosthetic Conscience

Links for 2007-08-10 Fri

• RMS’s LISP experiences and the development of GNU Emacs
  

  The most interesting thing in this talk is the fact that because they hadn’t been told it was “programming” (which they thought was too hard for them), the secretaries at the MIT AI lab were able to learn to program by exending Emacs for their own uses.

  So Bernie saw that an application — a program that does something useful for you — which has Lisp inside it and which you could extend by rewriting the Lisp programs, is actually a very good way for people to learn programming. It gives them a chance to write small programs that are useful for them, which in most arenas you can’t possibly do. They can get encouragement for their own practical use — at the stage where it’s the hardest — where they don’t believe they can program, until they get to the point where they are programmers.

• Replacing rotten bathroom subfloor - Fix-it Forum
  
• Lowes: Replacing a toilet
  
• Rotten bathroom subfloor (DIY Chatroom)
  
• Wine label makes food taste better
  
• Cryptogon: Study: Food in McDonald’s Wrapper Tastes Better to Kids
  

  And here’s the kiddie version of the wine labels story I linked to above.

• Java’s fear of commitment
  

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