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Today, I learned...
Today, I learned...
November, 2022
November, 2022
Strange Loop Conference
Strange Loop Conference
Our Shared Joy of Programming
Our Shared Joy of Programming
Strange Loop Conference, St. Louis, September 2014
Carin Meier
Carin Meier
Carin Meier has a Bachelors in Physics from the University of Cincinnati. She has decades of experience as an engineer, and has a published book on Clojure, a dialect of Lisp. She's spoken a number of times at a number of places; often on Clojure.
About Sam Aaron
About Sam Aaron
Excerpt from Programming as Performance page:
Dr. Sam Aaron is a Research Associate at Wolfson College and in the Digital Technology Group at the Computer Laboratory, part of the University of Cambridge. He is the founder and creator of Sonic Pi.
Finding Joy in Code
Finding Joy in Code
Meier discusses what she loves in programming, but also about how that joy can disappear. She talks about taking care of yourself, and also finding things that help you stay interested- like programming flying drones. In her own personal life, a close friend and mentor to her passed away, Jim Weirich. Weirich was a programmer and speaker, her is also known for creating Rake, a tool used to automate tasks with Ruby. Meier no longer found joy in just about anything- including programming.
However, it was through the Clojure library, Overtone, that she found curiosity and joy again following this difficult time. Through this, she was able to find joy, but also to take part in shared joy, and becoming part of a community through that joy.
Overtone
Overtone
Overtone is an open source project by Jeff Rose and Sam Aaron. This audio environment is designed to let coders explore new musical ideas from synthesis and sampling to instrument building, live-coding and collaborative jamming. We combine the powerful SuperCollider audio engine, with Clojure, a state of-the-art lisp, to create an intoxicating interactive sonic experience.
Interesting Things with Coding
Interesting Things with Coding
Sam Aaron talks about how most people don't know that coding can be interesting, that coding can be used to create interesting things- that it's not just boring. The problem often is, the work and prep it takes to get to the point where they can do interesting things is not easy. You lose them before they can do anything interesting; so the approach must be changed.
Sonic Pi
Sonic Pi
In the UK, education is changing, and programming and CS is becoming more mainstream. However, the prior model was based on teaching mostly office-type software. This is not really the goal or ideal, and it takes time to change; time to change curriculum and for the teachers to be retrained. So, how to change this? How to make improvements in this area? A new tool is needed, with regards for ease of use and low in cost- this became Sonic Pi.
Sam Aaron was able to get funding from the Arts Council England to get a group of musical artists together to learn how to program and create music with Sonic Pi. This also included an educational workshop at the Wysing Annual Music Festival in 2013.
Rob Smith, one of the musical artists involved in the project, connected a camera to the Raspberry Pi. The pixels in the photo were then converted into audio and played over a speaker. A microphone then captured that audio and converted it back into an image.
A live demo of how to create music with Sonic Pi follows, along with examples and stories of sharing and teaching computer science through Sonic Pi.
Lastly, is a demo of music created by Sam Aaron in Clojure Overtone, with Carin Meier's robots movements in sync.
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