https://www.wired.com/story/back-to-basic-the-most-consequential-programming-language
Great writing in technology circles is rare. Clive Thompson consistently does a nice job at WIRED and brings out human perspectives in tech.
This article (a quick read; do it!) reminded me of the 1970’s when my dad bought a knock-off Apple II and I learned to write BASIC programs, indeed copied BASIC programs out of magazines and typed them by hand and: amazing! Tic-tac-toe, and other simple games. We stored our typed programs and documents on an 8 inch floppy disk. We felt like wizards.
My favorite sentence from the article:
As the software engineer Erin Spiceland puts it, coding is “telling rocks what to think.”
Coding: writing software in a language we understand. Telling rocks: the silicon that runs in our computers comes from sand, from ground-down rocks. What to think: software programs we write.
Love it.
There is something magical about moving from a non-tech world, what we call IRL now, and being able to CREATE something on the computer. It feels like little pieces of building a new world.
I feel like there is so much content, so many apps and websites online now, that the average kid doesn’t learn to program. We are, again, passive consumers. Like I was, in the 1970’s, a passive consumer of real-world environments, the average 2024 kid is a passive consumer of a torrent of online content, and NOT a designer/programmer/engineer unless they take a computer programming course in school.
It doesn’t take much. BASIC compilers can be downloaded for free. There are also so many online ways to learn to program (sorry, be a “software engineer.” Fancy-pants words.) Swift. Python. Ruby.
Have you written a program? Do your kids do so? Are we teaching our colleagues not to be afraid of electronic tech because they’ve learned how to design something — anything themselves?
Even in the EHR (electronic health records) world, we have varying levels of skill and comfort with computer technology. I encourage ALL my physician/APP colleagues to climb that tech ladder at least a little:
- Basic: EHR user (passive consumer of electronic tools)
- EHR user with high proficiency score (some effort customizing the EHR)
- SmartUser (certificate from 10 hours of online lessons on EHR efficiency)
- Physician Builder (certificate from 2 courses on deep design of EHR tools)
- Advanced Builder and certifications (the EHR rabbit hole goes deep)
The more control we give ourselves and our colleagues of the tools we use daily, the more we are fully participating in the world.
CMIO’s take? Start with learning BASIC. Climb the ladder into the sunlight of the new world, my friends.
