Learning

Yesterday I dismantled my Raspberry Pi and liberated the fan. My mission was two-fold: 1) silence the fan once in a while, and 2) experience building a real-world control loop. In Coding as Catharsis I introduced a little supervisory program I called Cricket. Its job is to keep watch for issues, to take certain actions when it can, and to signal for help when it must. Its region of interest is my home lab, a cloud-like collection of virtual machines I intend to subject to the relentless waves of chaos I call Real Life (TM). Think battered coastline in a hurricane, only smaller and with less water, and wind, and well … everything but the chaos. ...

Picture yourself at a bivouac just outside the city, a temporary refuge where you managed to get away for a little fresh air and a change of scene. Like all cities of its size, and like the relentlessness of rust, it never sleeps. And until this first night of freedom, it has kept you awake all too often too. Your reprieve from urban vigilance wasn’t granted. You had to build it yourself. You started small, like this camp in the woods. Not even a tent, just enough warmth and a breathable mesh for shelter from the bugs. ...

I lost some momentum on my bootcamp journey in recent days. Both “embers” in the flame panel have gone dim (see banner), signifying I haven’t submitted any work for two days. I had made it a point of pride that those embers were never lost. So, what’s really going on? I was, and still am, working on Chapter 5: Storage. The lessons so far: CH 5 - Lesson 2 (Goose Migrations) - Postgres SQL schema migrations CH 5 - Lesson 3 (SQLC) - Code generator from SQL commands CH 5 - Lesson 4 (Database Review) - Quick notes about dialects and a pop quiz CH 5 - Lesson 5 (Create User) - We have the SQL defined, now wire up the API handler CH 5 - Lesson 6 (Create Chirp) - CRUD operations for “chirps” (where I am now) I’d already been down the Goose and SQLC road in a previous course, so I thought I’d blast right through this part. ...

I’ve been taking a break from gainful employment, and filling the craving for tasks by doing Boot.dev courses. My bio on the site currently reads: Rusty CS masters grad from Canada, minor in psych to help understand HCI. Taking boot camp to cure 5 years confinement to OPS, and prolonged exposure to business 4GL and wishful approaches to AI. I’ll unpack the snark in other posts. Today I thought I’d say a quick thanks to Boot.dev for their work, and to offer the perspective of an aging coder and what I’m getting from the online, gamified bootcamp experience. ...

I can’t say for sure what the poet William Blake had in mind in the early 1790’s when he wrote “The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction”, but I hope he won’t my comparing it to learning by building, also known as constructionism 🔗 . The educational theory of constructionism observes that people learn best by making and sharing things. If you’re looking for effective instruction, there is no substitute for facing the claws of a technical tiger, particularly one you have chosen to meet yourself. Conversely, you may find you can’t recall how to proceed with a new program in spite of having read a half dozen tutorials on the subject. If this is the case, perhaps you’re mistaking those forgettable horses for much more challenging tigers. ...