Pages
-
Recent Posts
-
Recent Comments
- Introducing Maker Party 2013. Join the open online course. Building Webmaker 2.0. | openmatt on Thought experiment: letting git normalize whitespace
- Lonnen on Thought experiment: letting git normalize whitespace
- CAFxX on Thought experiment: letting git normalize whitespace
- Simon on Thought experiment: letting git normalize whitespace
- Jesper Kristensen on Thought experiment: letting git normalize whitespace
Categories
- Baking
- CDOT
- Come on!
- Critics
- Digital Swag
- DPS909
- DXR
- Experiments with audio
- family
- Food
- FSOSS
- Home School
- Idea Factory
- Implementing Mouse Lock
- Implementing WebVTT
- Introversion
- MoFoDev
- Mozilla
- Mozilla Education
- Nature
- Processing.js
- Reading
- Seneca
- Teaching Open Source
- Uncategorized
- VncSharp
- Web Made Movies
- Webmaker
- Wireless
Archives
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
Explaining the web by cooking
I spend a great deal of my time explaining to students how to work on the web. Open source development is as much about working via the web as it is about source code. Students often have a hard time believing me when I tell them that blogging has value, or that keeping a wiki up to date is important, or that code in a repository should build for people other than themselves: “Nobody is going to look at this stuff.” No, that’s how television works, and that’s the world that bookstores create, but that’s not how the web is built.
The web is made out of data packets, XML, JavaScript, baking powder, blog comments, and short films about cookbook authors. Yesterday I was delighted to read my friend Luke blogging about pancakes and, as always, an obscure little book he’d picked up; this time a cookbook by Edna Lewis. I’ll let you read the post for yourself, but the bit I’m most interested in (I actually loved the detour to discuss baking powder, don’t get me wrong!) is the comment that Bailey Barash made:
I get so much mail from people I don’t know related to my work, that I’ve stopped thinking about it as special. It’s simply how the web works. And yet I was happy to see it happening in a non-technical discussion. Much of my thinking of late has been about how to enable non-technical collaborative projects via the web. I’ve never doubted you could do it, but I’m happy to have a simple example to point at and say, “See? Exactly.”
The web is made out of data packets, XML, JavaScript, baking powder, blog comments, and short films about cookbook authors.