What ARE the basics of programming?

A week or so ago, I had a fascinating cab ride home talking with the cab driver about his passion, topology. (Sidenote: did you ever expect to see a sentence like that?)

Before he revealed he was a mathematician by training (dual Master’s degrees, no less), we talked about software, and how he was never very good at programming.  I said that the trick with programming is that it all boils down to some very simple basics, and that once you know those, you are all set.

Great, he asked, what are they?

And I couldn’t answer.

Oh, sure, I blathered on for a bit about “you must remember that it’s just a machine, and it does what you tell it,” but that was as good as I could manage.  In other words: crap.

I’m going to have to mull on this for a bit, because I know there are basics to software, and most languages.  I’m pretty sure those basics center around control structures, and that once you know those, you are all set.  There may be something about variables or scopes or storage or the like, but we’ll see.

Stay tuned.

The end of the Civil War

Another milestone in U.S. history may have just occurred this past Tuesday night: the end of the Civil War, more than 140 years later.

While we are educated to perceive the Civil War as a fight for human liberty, and specifically for the rights of Africans imported to the U.S. as slaves, that is only one aspect of the conflict.  At the time the war broke out, the U.S. was pulling apart at the seams, schizophrenically grappling with how to reconcile what amounted to two nations inside it: the North and the South.  Disagreements over slavery may have sparked the war, but the conflict and tension was already there — and was never really resolved at the war’s conclusion.

We see that conflict today in the ideological divisions between “Red” and “Blue.”  The remnants of the South are predominantly “Red States,” and the winning North is at the heart of the “Blue States.”  Despite its great wealth before the war, the post-war effects left the South destitute and mired in poverty for generations.  Over time, the struggle between former nations became a class struggle, between rich and poor, between the educated and the illiterate.  To some extent it is natural that other equally less-affluent states such as those in the Midwest (Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas) might also begin to feel an affinity for the Red State agenda: their side in the class war, should they choose to engage it, was clear.  The educated upper class, predominantly located in the Northeast, welcomed diversity and progress; the struggling middle and lower classes still harbored desires for racial purity and a yearning to resolve ancient grudges.

All of that leads us to Obama’s victorious election on Tuesday.  To have an educated, intelligent, respected black man as the President-Elect of the United States is a complete repudiation of all that the old South might have wanted to create.  It is the end of white supremacy in the United States, and the beginning of a poly-cultural America where education is valued and the class-war doesn’t have to matter, because we are all in the same ship.  And right now that ship is sinking.  We just might have saved ourselves by choosing Obama to show us how to bail.

Let us hope that this war is finally ended, and that the next chapter of American history is more diverse and welcoming.

My President

Wow, I still can’t be believe it.  Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States of America.  No joke, there were people dancing in the streets once they found out.  That happened in my neighborhood, and around the world.

Last night’s election result is historic for many, many reasons, but one clearly comes to mind, and I am grateful: my earlier hope that Bush’s legacy would be the destruction of the far right as a force in American politics might have come true.  Not only did Obama win by a comfortable margin (at least 7 million in the popular vote as of this morning, but a 2 to 1 margin in the electoral vote), but the Democratic Party solidified its grip on Congress.  Several “sacred cows” of the Republican Party lost:

• Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina
• John Sununu in New Hampshire
• Virginia will have a Democratic governor
• Virginia, Florida, and Ohio all voted Democrat

One commentator on CNN last night made a very good point that with America’s shifting demographics towards a “plurality of minorities,” perhaps with Obama the transition to an era when white voters do not determine the election alone is at hand.  I might add to that male, conservative, and possibly rural.  Diversity just won the highest post in the land.

The significance of this election will be analyzed and discussed for generations.  For now, I recall what I wrote to a friend last night after hearing the results: when she heard Deval Patrick speak at the beginning of his race for Governor of Massachusetts in the last election, she felt hope again.  Last night, not only did I feel hope, but I believe.

President Obama, my President, I believe.