The Tree Of Research Must Be Fed

School Is Basically About One Point Of View - The One The Teacher Has Or The Textbooks Have. They Don't Like The Idea Of Having Different Points Of View.

The Flip Side Of The Coin Was That Even Good Programmers And Language Designers Tended To Do Terrible Extensions When They Were In The Heat Of Programming, Because Design Is Something That Is Best Done Slowly And Carefully.

Computer Literacy Is A Contact With The Activity Of Computing Deep Enough To Make The Computational Equivalent Of Reading And Writing Fluent And Enjoyable. As In All The Arts, A Romance With The Material Must Be Well Under Way. If We Value The Lifelong Learning Of Arts And Letters As A Springboard For Personal And Societal Growth, Should Any Less Effort Be Spent To Make Computing A Part Of Our Lives?

Basic Would Never Have Surfaced Because There Was Always A Language Better Than Basic For That Purpose. That Language Was Joss, Which Predated Basic And Was Beautiful. But Basic Happened To Be On A Ge Timesharing System That Was Done By Dartmouth, And When Ge Decided To Franchise That, It Started Spreading Basic Around Just Because It Was There, Not Because It Had Any Intrinsic Merits Whatsoever.

An Important Technology First Creates A Problem And Then Solves It.