Pet Theory

Googling is one of those things that has so saturated my life that it now seems trivial. How did programmers operate before Google? Images flit before the mind…IRC, books, co-workers…but seriously, for someone who searches hourly, the mind boggles.

If you live with Google for a while, the controversy about the Web’s inclusivity–how can we sift the smart from the dumb?–is useless. When I was a stupid programmer, I found a lot of slightly-less-stupid blog posts, tutorial and articles that spoke to the stupid in me. When I become less stupid, other voices beckoned. The web grows with me.

Lately I’ve been wondering whether the web should preserve even more stupidity. When I really look at the hours I rack up programming, far too many of them are consumed with stupid mistakes, especially when starting fresh on a new kind of task, language or project. Google is still helpful then, but all too often I find myself grinding through some stupidity alone.

This is partly due to the fact that the set of smart, conceptual mistakes is a minor subset of all possible mistakes. “It’s” v. “Its” is downright hi-concept… “accommodate” v. “acommodate”, “accomodate”, “accommadate” is nearly random in comparison. Not even the web can preserve all the permutations of sheer error.

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When I was a kid, my older brother taught me a few blues chord progressions on the guitar so he could solo soulfully over me. I accepted this division of labor because my deficient sense of rhythm and pitch was immediately, painfully obvious.

I remembered this last week when I hooked up a USB keyboard to my computer and fired up GarageBand, because all of a sudden I had unexpected musical hope.

For me, the program’s killer feature is a graphic view of the notes (each note is an elongated rectangle). When I hit a key, I can really see the note–how high it is, how long I hold it, how it compares to other notes. So far, this goes a decent way towards overcoming my handicaps.

I’m surprised, because what had seemed necessary (my dorky-white-guy fingers pouring out music), seems dramatically less so, because I’ve found an alternate, more visual route to the sound.

I can strike notes, listen with my feelings, adjust the notes (users can change their duration and frequency by dragging them), then start the process over again. Since I just want to compose custom music and sounds for Flash files, that I’ll never perform from a park bench doesn’t bother me.

Think, act, see result, think, act, see result. Etc. A feedback loop is common enough (play, work, learning, interfaces, life) but my little adventure this week definitely brings home the idea that technology keeps changing the prerequisites for entering particular loops.

My soloing older brother is a case in point. He was never good at basic math. So what did he become? A sickeningly rich accountant. Apparently, whatever he does (he’s explained it, but I can’t comprehend), it now requires a different kind of quarter to get the pinball machine lit up and ready to go.

Writing the last post (on audio help) dislodged an old memory of a TV on PBS, one where a calm man with frizzy hair painted and murmured about his process at the same time. At the end of each show, one painting was complete.

Now it strikes me that audio help might be bettered murmured than delivered clear preemptory voice. That way, the user's attention can move alternately from the spoken word, to the act of painting, to the painting itself–or take in all at once…whatever works best in the moment.

Last week I attended a projection of a Breezecast at the LA Flash factory. If you had overheard the sessions, you wouldn't have been impressed. Basically, this guy hemmed and hawed and digressed and clicked happily away as he wrote some Flex-related php code.

Strange thing is, it was the best presentation of code I'd ever seen. Both because underlying his rambling monologue was a methodical mind, and because the format was perfect: he was DOING and EXPLAINING at once.

His success got me thinking:

1) This educational technique is underused. Perhaps with the proliferation of Captivate and other screen-capture technology it might even go behind explaining program-focused curriculum (learning Photoshop). Perhaps there might be a way to create excellent videos that can be proctored (the proctor writes code or answers questions during the session). And perhaps the medium for this format would be…Flash.

2) Voice has an odd quality. It can mix with anything…music, painting, reading…it's the kind of peanut gallery that accompanies everyone's world, tracing the thoughts trying to make sense of it. So, for instance, I think voice+pics generally works better than text+pics. With voice, you don't have to GO AWAY from the thing you are learning, whether a program or a back swing or whatever (a singing lesson?).

Here is a 3d-based site, my old ad agency, that gives you verbal instruction after a nearly unforgiveable splash page.

I wish in this case that the graphics of the site itself moved more in synch with the voice (go HERE, do it LIKE THIS). As it is, voice loses its mix-in potency and becomes a kind of spoken text.