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    <title>cmdln.net_2008-04-30</title>
    <expansionState>0,2,6,7,11,13,14,21,32,41,52,62,64,68,73,83,89,99,108,133,142,143,151</expansionState>
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  <body>
    <outline text="Intro" Offset="00:17">
      <outline text="Little Brother launches"/>
      <outline text="RavenCon">
        <outline text="Interviewed for the Future and You"/>
        <outline text="http://www.thefutureandyou.com/"/>
        <outline text="http://www.thefutureandyou.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=334321"/>
      </outline>
    </outline>
    <outline text="Listener Feedback" Offset="02:25">
      <outline text="C.A. Sizemore on Social Spaces">
        <outline text="A reason for following would solve one Twitter annoyance"/>
        <outline text="Apology accepted"/>
        <outline text="Balance of followers, following seems to be a good heuristic"/>
      </outline>
    </outline>
    <outline text="Word of the Week: dd" Offset="05:44">
      <outline text="http://catb.org/jargon/html/D/dd.html"/>
    </outline>
    <outline text="Monologue: Effect of Coding on Thought" Offset="07:01">
      <outline text="Request from listeners">
        <outline text="From Kreg Steppe, Technorama"/>
        <outline text="&quot;Programming is about patterns and structure.  Does that bias, hinder or affect real world interactions in any way?&quot;"/>
        <outline text="From Chris Miller, The Secret Lair"/>
        <outline text="Does being fluent at code make writing prose or other creative endeavors more difficult?"/>
      </outline>
      <outline text="I very much think being a hacker affects cognition"/>
      <outline text="The question is do you have a hacker brain before coding or does coding cause you to think differently?"/>
      <outline text="Sapir-Whorf hypothesis">
        <outline text="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis"/>
        <outline text="Idea is language shapes the way we think"/>
        <outline text="Programming languages definitely qualify"/>
        <outline text="Strong version says language wholly informs thought"/>
        <outline text="Would certainly explain how spending so much time with code effects perceptions"/>
        <outline text="Kenneth Iverson, creator of APL, applied to coding"/>
        <outline text="Turing award winning lecture, &quot;Notation as a tool of thought&quot;"/>
        <outline text="Argued that more powerful notations aided thinking about algorithms"/>
        <outline text="Others have expressed similar sentiments"/>
        <outline text="Usually in support of their favorite programming languages"/>
      </outline>
      <outline text="Discussion with author of the book Kluge, from Quirks and Quarks 4/19">
        <outline text="Gary Markus"/>
        <outline text="Ad hoc nature of neurology evolution"/>
        <outline text="Ambiguity in language"/>
        <outline text="Attempt of researcher to craft non-ambiguous language"/>
        <outline text="Example of parenthesis in math, code"/>
        <outline text="Failure of experiment around Whorf hypothesis because memory is too poor"/>
        <outline text="Markus thinks this invalidates strong version Sapir-Whorf"/>
        <outline text="Probably leaves some room for an affect but doesn't wholly govern how we think"/>
      </outline>
      <outline text="Hackers think differently">
        <outline text="Possibly the structure of brains is at odds with other functions"/>
        <outline text="Probably less to do with the activity of coding"/>
        <outline text="In fact different brain structure may predispose to coding, not the other way around"/>
        <outline text="Better at modeling"/>
        <outline text="Maintain state of programs in head"/>
        <outline text="Able to think through at least a few branches"/>
        <outline text="Able to problem solve complex systems"/>
        <outline text="Track multiple variables, combinatorial interactions"/>
        <outline text="What else requires this?"/>
        <outline text="Really asking, not sure except for maybe some other forms of engineering, math"/>
      </outline>
      <outline text="Frequency, commonness of high functioning autism">
        <outline text="Aspberger, in particular"/>
        <outline text="Deficiencies in communications, social skills, bias towards inward focus"/>
        <outline text="Need for modeling aligns well"/>
        <outline text="Coding can be solitary though doesn't have to be"/>
        <outline text="Coding is about clear intent, still a form of communicating"/>
        <outline text="Instructions for the machine but higher level languages about clear intent"/>
        <outline text="Maintenance is about readability, understanding"/>
        <outline text="Machine focus means rules are more rigidly defined, unlike normal socialization"/>
        <outline text="Lends credence that it is the predisposition that comes first, not coding as cause"/>
      </outline>
      <outline text="Frustrated at poor algorithms in real life">
        <outline text="Many non-computer systems are algorithmic"/>
        <outline text="Many examples in the natural world (thanks MWS!)">
          <outline text="Fibonacci sequence as governs distribution of plant leaves"/>
          <outline text="Flocking birds and other swarming behaviors"/>
          <outline text="Autocatalytic networks in organic chemistry"/>
        </outline>
        <outline text="And the every day">
          <outline text="Traffic patterns, including merge, roundabout and 4-way stop (thanks Anna!)"/>
          <outline text="Cooking, baking, following recipes"/>
          <outline text="Raising a kid in the sense that your input, guidance is like programming their mind (thanks Heather!)"/>
        </outline>
        <outline text="The every day is where there is a bit more room for bad &quot;implementations&quot;"/>
        <outline text="Plane boarding in particular ticks me off">
          <outline text="Seems vastly unfair, some of that is people gaming the system"/>
          <outline text="Recent study proved strict row by row boarding is most efficient"/>
          <outline text="Have always felt that to be the case"/>
          <outline text="Practical enough to realize it won't be implemented"/>
          <outline text="The hacker in me finds it frustrating nonetheless"/>
          <outline text="This is a packing problem, not a people problem"/>
          <outline text="But since it involved people, there are messy social bits"/>
          <outline text="Defies efficient implementation"/>
          <outline text="Wife, by contrast, is more easily able to let it go"/>
        </outline>
        <outline text="Everyone can appreciate the difference between good, bad cooking">
          <outline text="Strict implementations should yield the same result every time"/>
          <outline text="The difference can sometimes be startling"/>
          <outline text="Hear chefs speak of how much they enjoy the simplest dishes"/>
          <outline text="These often show the difference in skill as a result"/>
          <outline text="On a different level, can appreciate that as a hacker"/>
        </outline>
        <outline text="Seeing the way kids are raised differently is can also be frustrating">
          <outline text="If you questions the parents views"/>
          <outline text="Worry after kids raised with only those perspectives"/>
          <outline text="In particular, I worry about solely faith based upbringing"/>
          <outline text="Don't believe there is no room for religion"/>
          <outline text="But think best upbringing exposes children equally to different views, cultures"/>
        </outline>
        <outline text="These all have in common the possibility for clear, simple rules"/>
        <outline text="But they rarely follow such expected courses"/>
        <outline text="Can range from irksome to distressing for hacker minds"/>
        <outline text="Got more suggestions, limited by time and think these make the point"/>
      </outline>
      <outline text="Childhood idea of being an engineer">
        <outline text="Pressured by parents, grand parents about future"/>
        <outline text="Frustrated by toys that aren't as detailed, interesting as I thought they should be"/>
        <outline text="Transformers that don't work quite right"/>
        <outline text="Other articulated toys that are cruder than I thought they should be"/>
        <outline text="Based on that, said I wanted to be an engineer"/>
        <outline text="Didn't really understand what was involved"/>
        <outline text="Just thought there was an opportunity to do things better"/>
        <outline text="Professionally, still motivated by learning how to code better"/>
      </outline>
      <outline text="Struggling to learn how to re-factor prose">
        <outline text="Chris ask in particular about writing vs. coding"/>
        <outline text="Both seem to use same speech, text centers of the brain"/>
        <outline text="I cannot listen to involved talk programs while I code"/>
        <outline text="I know others with this same quirk"/>
        <outline text="Coding skills don't translate to writing, though"/>
        <outline text="Organizational skills, like functional decomposition, help with some specific cases"/>
        <outline text="Technical writing and essays can be approached based on structure"/>
        <outline text="Narrative, prose not so much"/>
        <outline text="Dialogue in particular needs to have all the usual sloppiness of real language"/>
        <outline text="Suffers from same Sapir-Whorf experiment"/>
        <outline text="Code can be written un-ambiguously"/>
        <outline text="Need to do so or computer doesn't do what you want"/>
        <outline text="Narration, description, dialogue like that is unreadable"/>
        <outline text="Refactoring and editing seem superficially similar"/>
        <outline text="Editing is limited by linear nature of prose"/>
        <outline text="Code is only limited by connections between constructs"/>
        <outline text="It is somewhat linear but branches, has decision points and non-linear complexity"/>
        <outline text="Choose your own adventure, interactive fiction may be similar"/>
        <outline text="Even then, smallest chunks more like writing than coding"/>
        <outline text="Challenge of habit, coding practice doesn't translate"/>
        <outline text="Challenge of context switch, coding mindset is different enough that it takes energy to switch to prose"/>
        <outline text="That's why I outline my notes"/>
        <outline text="Easier to re-organize, like code"/>
        <outline text="Also simpler, quicker, more code-like to jot down phrases, snippets"/>
      </outline>
      <outline text="As a hacker, you are not alone">
        <outline text="The very reason my motto is hack your world is to encourage hacker mentality"/>
        <outline text="I want to write and recognize I need to work with, against my hacker mind"/>
        <outline text="The real world often irks me, but I recognize what I cannot hack and that my inability to do so is the source of my frustration"/>
        <outline text="Revel in what you can hack"/>
        <outline text="Hack creatively, learn how to use that mindset as much as you can"/>
        <outline text="The rest can be learned and practiced on its own, if you want it badly enough"/>
        <outline text="Bram Cohen even talks about hacking his own aspberger"/>
        <outline text="Reverse engineering social rules and interacting based on rules"/>
      </outline>
    </outline>
    <outline text="Outro" Offset="28:10">
      <outline text="Contact me">
        <outline text="Email to feedback@thecommandline.net"/>
        <outline text="Web site at http://thecommandline.net/"/>
        <outline text="IM to command.line@skype"/>
        <outline text="Listener comment line is 240-949-2638"/>
        <outline text="del.icio.us tag is &quot;for:cmdln&quot;"/>
        <outline text="http://twitter.com/cmdln"/>
      </outline>
      <outline text="I'd like to thank libsyn.com for AAC hosting and Wouter de Bie for MP3 hosting"/>
      <outline text="These notes and the show audio and music are covered by a Creative Commons license">
        <outline text="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/"/>
        <outline text="Attribution, non-commercial, share alike"/>
      </outline>
    </outline>
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