Invisible Things Making Noise

The winners are scrappy and don't wait for someone else to hand them their dinner; they run out into the dark and chase down those invisible things making noise.

We are the winners. We're not waiting for a clear picture. We're not waiting for permission or credentials. We're doing it - now. We'll figure it out as we go. 

The things we build won't be perfect. They won't be clean. They won't be optimized, but they will BE.

Waiting for perfect will keep us waiting forever. Better to be scrappy.

Meeting: The Second

IT HAS BEGUN!

Tonight we took our first steps into the code: HTML and CSS and Javascript: the beginnings of empire. Because of c9.io we were all able to code together - working on the same document at the same time - so we didn't have to huddle around a single machine while only one person typed. It was great.

Topics of discussion included:

• Lisp: the AI mother tongue
• The basics of web hosting
• HTML (the nouns)
• CSS (the modifiers)
• Javascript (the verbs)
• Bitcoin
• What programming is actually like (lots of documentation tabs)
• Everyone's programming goals for the next year:
• Start a business and publish a few apps
• Build a website
• Learn more about low-level languages (C, Assembly, etc...)
• Build a little RasberryPi robot
• Fix a family-member's eCommerce site

Onward to the edge!

Tom Hughes-Croucher: The Internet of Things

Nicole Sullivan: Don't Feed the Trolls

Internal trolls feed on inattention. If you don't want to troll yourself, you actually have to be willing to notice your own behavior. 

Eric Grimson: MIT Computer Science

Cloud 9

The First Time

We didn't code at all - but tonight was fantastic. Topics of discussion included:

• Our individual reasons to take the leap and begin programming
• Project ideas (from games, to democracy, to a variation on the Traveling Salesman problem)
• An introduction to some programming vocabulary
• variables
• arrays
• functions
• booleans
• compiled languages and compilers
• javascript, c, assembly, and python
• turing completeness
• Future format (a loose idea)
• meet on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of every month
• 30 minutes to chat
• 30 to learn something new
• 30 to pair program
• 30 to show off a personal project
• The possibility of building our own tools
• The Map of Javascript
• Cloud 9