No. 90 — thoughts.txt ⫶ Portals ⫶ Reader Survey

probably zelda, but only the sidequests

My name is Linda. I write a bi-weekly newsletter about computer science, childhood, and culture.

So, a few weeks ago, I flipped the switch: paid subscriptions are now a thing. Nothing changes if you're on the free tier, but I do want to pause and send out a huge, heartfelt thank-you to everyone who has decided to support this experiment, whether you're a longtime reader (there are people who have been with me on this computing and childhood journey for over a decade!) or a brand-new face.

Now, a confession: aside from a few names, I only know a little about who you are and why you're here! So, to satisfy my curiosity: the very first Hello Ruby Newsletter Reader Survey. Who are we? What do we care about? Why are we hanging out in this small corner of the Internet? Your answers will help shape what's next.

(And if you're here, reading this, and still on the free side of things, I'll gently nudge you: might you upgrade?)

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I received a fascinating list of questions in response to my call. Some even arrived in bundles!

How’s Paris working out for you? Are you there for good or is it a moveable feast?

My fourth year in Paris started in September. The first few years were an experiment, but now it's starting to feel more serious. There's a neighborhood flower shop, a smudged afternoon goûter, and a Wednesday routine at the library. I still have very few friends here as I primarily work alone, and sometimes, I feel like I'm bobbing along with an imaginary Paris as a backdrop.

With that, Hemingway said it best: "There is never any ending to Paris, and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it, no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. It was always worth it and we received a return for whatever we brought to it."

If you had an unlimited budget, what’s the craziest thing you’d add to a computer science-themed playground?

I would connect them. I would love to see playgrounds as public places that offer the same whizzing sense of connecting across the globe as the early Internet. At the computer science playground, kids in Helsinki could solve puzzles with peers in Tokyo, or parents in Paris could share in their children's play with families in New York. Co-presence! Portals! A unique protocol for play!

What are your upcoming plans?

The following two weeks: massive work crunch, cook sticky miso salmon bowl, see Luciatåg here in Paris, enjoy the Helsinki holidays, finish a hundred books of the 2024 challenge, and write my year in review.

Next year: publish my first book for grownups (first in Finnish, and maybe in English one day), build more playgrounds, and start running again.

Do you find inspiration in the chaos of your toddler’s playtime—or is that strictly survival mode?

Independent play is a new milestone in our house and, at best, lasts about 10 minutes. It's humbling to admit that I'm not the parent orchestrating elaborate crafting sessions. Still, the hours I've spent with the wise atelieristas of Reggio Emilia have taught me to trust the child to lead the process. "There is a constant relational reciprocity between those who educate and those who are educated, between those who teach and those who learn. There is participation, passion, compassion, and emotion. There is aesthetics. There is change", says Carla Rinaldi. So yes, an inspiration more than a chore. (I also wrote earlier about playground time thinking and how it has changed my working habits.)

Love your smile. Where do you find happiness in everyday life?

Miracle of being.

I need knowledge organising wisdom - what’s your system? How to keep track for all those ideas and projects. How do you do that? How do you stay on top? Thank you!

This is from an old answer, but still very much valid:

I still use RSS! After ten years, it's almost silly how often I start my day browsing through favorite blogs and other feeds, and most of my ideas come from this habit, not from Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or some other algorithmic feed. More recently, I have followed newsletters, but even then, I order through RSS. I used to be an avid Google Reader user, but I have now replaced it with Feedly. This year, I made the switch to Are.na. I also use Readwise to look for inspiration from my Kindle highlights.

In addition, I have a simple text file called thoughts.txt, where I post things that I find extra relevant monthly; they are like tiny amulets. I also often use iPhone notes and carry several physical notebooks.

A more recent experiment has been taking all of this above and asking an LLM to find patterns from it. For example, I have 13 years of Kindle notes in a text file. It turns out one of the most beautiful things genAI can do for me is search, group, and surface common themes and ideas among this tiny, personal corpus.

Is teaching kids to code overrated in a world where AI can write programs?

I hear this question so often that I think I'll need to experiment with it more. The short answer is no. The long answer is a combination of Shuchi Grover's Computational Thinking: The Idea That Lived, Paul Graham's Hundred Year Language, and the Chinese poet, painter, and writer Mu Xin's lines on childhood: "If a child knows what he should know and does not know what he should not, his childhood will be very happy."

If your life were a computer game, what would the objective be?

Probably Zelda, but only the sidequests, cooking, and general wandering around.

What’s your favorite “easter egg” in the Helsinki computer science playground?

Not hidden, but I like the internet cat! (A rabbit hole I fell deep into: Is Nyancat copyrighted)

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Linked List

In computer science, a linked list is a linear collection of data elements whose order is not given by their physical placement in memory. But here it is a selection of things I’ve been reading lately.

• I bought two new pieces of technology: a Canon Selphy CP1500 photo printer on Jack's recommendation and a Daylight DC-1 tablet. Both of these tools have subtly changed my habits. They are compact, simple, and rewarding to touch.

• "In Busytown there's just enough innocent mayhem and tripping and falling to hint at a darker side of things, like failing 1970s marriages and the things on television news that adults were always yelling about." Chris Ware on Richard Scarry and the art of children's literature. (In my house, we read Busy Busy Town and solemnly repeat the lines "There are all kinds of writers. The best writers write children's books" and "Artists paint pictures. The best artists paint pictures for children's books.”)

• Diana Kimball's letters on Diagonal make me feel like a sociologist discovering something rare, interesting, and poignant in the computational universe. It is probably the newsletter I click most links on.

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Classroom

I’m hoping to surface and share stories from all of you and I’d love to see your creations! Here are a few teachers using Ruby in creative, fun and inspiring ways.

Monstrum put together a lovely case study on the playground. I am proud to be featured as one of their projects:

For my Japanese readers: a story on the playground in Casa Brutus

And another one for the German audience!