<html><head><style>body{font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px}</style></head><body><div style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; ">Ken,</div><div><div style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; "><br></div><div style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; ">Are you familiar with Opusmodus?</div><div style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; "><<a href="http://opusmodus.com">http://opusmodus.com</a>></div><div style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; "><br></div><div style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; ">It’s written in Clozure ccl, and besides providing an incredible array of music manipulation functions and structures, it’s got a beautiful window system. Mac only.</div><div style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; "><br></div><div style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; ">Your idea of using music as a hook to learn Lisp sounds plausible. Good Luck!</div> <br> <div class="gmail_signature"><div> - Stoney</div>————<div>Stonewall Ballard <a href="mailto:stoney@sb.org">stoney@sb.org</a> <a href="http://stoney.sb.org">http://stoney.sb.org</a></div></div> <br><p class="airmail_on">On Monday, July 6 at 8:15:31 AM, Ken Tilton (<a href="mailto:kentilton@gmail.com">kentilton@gmail.com</a>) wrote:</p> <blockquote type="cite" class="clean_bq"><span><div><div></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large">So I got to thinking about creating an approachable pathway to IT careers for anyone really, but in the spirit of today one focused on creating career opportunities for African Americans.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large">The idea would be a code camp developed around algorithmic generation of music. I know nothing about music theory, except that there is prolly enough there to introduce most if not all fundamental programming concepts.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large">For those campers that accidentally get hooked on programming itself, which is how many of us ended up in IT careers, away they go!</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large">The idea is to:</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large"><ul><li>use music as the hook;</li><li>defer as long as possible the annoying things about programming (I am looking at you, node.js);</li><li>part of that ^^^ will be using a powerful language with the parentheses in the right place, prolly ClojureScript since that could run where JS runs;</li><li>keep programming as the focus, as tempting as the music will be. Sonic Pi comes with all sorts of built-in sound capabilities, but we want to <i>develop</i> those in the code camp;</li><li>tailor the program to specific musical genres, to maximize the musical hook.</li></ul><div>I am dropping this here since I know many Common Lispers have a strong musical bent. My questions are:</div><div><ul><li>Could we use CL instead? I do think this almost has to be a web app, perhaps even mobile. Hmmm, we <i>could</i> CL-ify CLJS with sufficent clever macrology.</li><li>What do you think? Can a solid programming fundamentals course be expressed in music theory? Hint: HTTP is not a programming fundamental.</li><li>If there is any interest, what would be a good place for an ongoing discussion? Google groups?</li></ul><div>Ideas, comments, suggestions all welcome.</div></div><div><br></div><div>-hk</div></div></div>
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