My Year in 1984, 40 years ago, though an ICT Lens.

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 22:55:20 +1000

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

When you've been in ICT (Information and Computer Technology) as long as I have, looking back 40 years to the year 1984, is a good exercise in memory, in perceiving changes in world view, changes in one's economic and social fortunes, and giving a personal snapshot of how far the computer and software landscape has changed (and where it hasn't changed so much), since four decades ago.

I had big plans for change in 1984. I'd worked hard in the same organisation for 5 going on 6 years, with then highly desirable and rare skills of an Analyst Programmer. You could walk into your job of choice as an experienced programmer in 1984. My then wife and I had each puzzled out what we each most wanted to do in life, in the year or two ahead in particular. We had bought our own home back in 1980, had paid most of it off as fast as possible, but were not ready yet to have kids. "So, what are our biggest to-do dreams?"we asked each other. Her's was to travel to and around Europe, while mine was to start my own software company. I suggested we do her's first, as mine couldn't tolerate a big gap, midstream. Furthermore, if I was going to travel through Europe, which hadn't been a significant goal of mine at all, then we should 'Do it Big!' and go for a whole year, for the duration of 1985, to make the journey worthwhile - I was an all-in sort of person in 1984. We agreed on that, and so we set about hatching a plan to finance such a long-term trip.

Our plan hinged on saving one of our two post-tax wages and living on the other for the coming year - she was a Senior Administrator of Exams & Awards at the RMIT (e.g. she organised and ran the exams in the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings, like clockwork). While I was an Analyst Programmer in the Computer Centre at the Australian Road Research Board (ARRB). We lived on her salary and banked mine during all of 1984, to finance the year of travel in 1985! I'd started at the ARRB as a Research Assistant, in Transport research in 1979. The day-to-day tasks there turned out to be 90% programming (in Fortran77 - the Fortran language that adhered to the 1977 Standard*, note: I've retained one 'Fortran Joke' from those days . . . it's a good one**), and then in statistical analysis using SPSS (the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences - a product later acquired by IBM which they still have and market as their own). SPSS included a reasonable internal programming language with respect to wrangling data into the file formats needed for the data analyses that followed. My aptitude for programming became clearly abundant to others as much as to myself, and so by 1980, after publishing a couple of research papers in Transport Engineering [1,2] (for which I built a complete digital model of the transport network, including streets, of the city of Ballarat, to simulate travel-to-work times), I moved into the Computer Centre there proper, as an Analyst Programmer, doing what I really loved most - solving problems, designing solutions, and writing code.

You couldn't get a degree in Computer Science in Australia in 1979, so we Analyst/Programmers picked it up on the job, after demonstrating an aptitude to self-learn programming and then excelling at it. Although I had previously done a subject on Computer Programming within my Engineering degree, back in the second year of a four year degree - but that single subject was centred on the BASIC language, and was specifically tailored to run Finite Element Analysis programs in structural engineering. And while I did get a B+ for it, the experience ignited no passion in me for programming, whatsoever. In retrospect, I put that down to the archaic input/output workflow at Monash University back then in 1975. The Monash Computer Centre we used there then was in the Mathematics Department, and they only took punch-card input, which we students delivered to the front desk. Even small programs could amount to a 6-inch high deck of punch cards, and then you had to wait 3 hours for the printed output, of how the program compilation went! Think about that. If you had a simple syntax error, you'd have to correct that card - one line of code per card - resubmit the whole deck to the front desk of the Computer Centre, and wait another 3 hours, and so on, repeat! So doing a simple assignment could take days of stop-start frustration. It was not conducive to igniting a passion for programming. Also, the 4-year engineering degree at Monash then included 9 subjects of mathematics across those years - effectively half a three year Science degree in Mathematics alone, so that snail-slow workflow for my one-and-only programming subject, was simply a survival task amongst dozens of subjects which often became a process of: study, cram, exam and forget.

Computing at the Australian Road Research Board, even in 1979, was vastly more sophisticated than what I had access to at Monash University as a student. It was a revelation! The ARRB had a $1million mainframe, plus appropriate housing (fire-extinguishing automatic gas-filling room that housed the central machinery, and full-time Operators tending to magnetic tape loading and emptying the central printer, the 3-colour pens graphic plotter, and so on), courtesy of a Whitlam Government research infrastructure grant, some years earlier. And when I moved into the Computer Centre in 1980, the mainframe was running at about 50% capacity. Most ARRB employee (about 120) had a terminal on their desks - even the gardener, and the mechanic who kept the company carpool in check. The mainframe was a Control Data 170, which was a mean-machine in its day, with a 60-bit word design. Everyone also had email, which was unheard of in most organisations of the time. In fact, to get all staff to use email, which was essential for email to work effectively, was harder than you might think. To do so, we in the Computer Centre devised a psychological hook. . .There was a central Receptionist, who was the interface with the outside world - both physical visits through the front door, and phone calls through a PABX switchboard. She also took messages, each on a paper slip, which she stuck to a noticeboard (think PostIt notes, which were also invented around 1977), for those people out-to-lunch or elsewhere. I.e. that noticeboard was the social interface to the outside world, for staff in all roles, particularly when employees were off-site, or even to-and-fro-ing to the Staff Canteen, fully-catered - e.g. inexpensive hot meals 5 days a week (i.e. it wasn't the modern IT startups that pioneered such work perks). So, we instigated a rule, that 'All personal messages coming to Reception, business and personal, would be sent to the individual's email address, instead of being plastered on the notice board, on a postit note'. . . That worked, and everybody in the organisation thereafter, accessed their email account regularly, and email took off within the organisation, well before it became a fixture in the outside world in general - well before the Internet and the great unwashed joined in the planet-scale dialog.

It wasn't just email that was 'modern' at the ARRB with those terminals on everyone's desk. I could create and edit my programs with fullscreen editing (in Xedit), compile and run programs in a matter of seconds, more like the modern experience, instead of that 3 hour stop-start workflow back at Monash Uni. This enlightened and technically empowering environment, was were I really got my passion for programming. There is a recurring lesson in those diametrically opposite early experiences: if you put too much administration and crud in the way of actual programming, people loose, or never even gain, a passion for it, for that platform, for that programming language. I see it at the moment for apps in app stores - unless you are aiming for a commercial juggernaut success with an app, the amount of administrative hoops in place, in getting a listing on Google Play or Apples App Store, reminds me very much of the Monash days in the 1970s with too much admin in the way of actual coding. Which of course, is one of the main reasons why the Python language has taken off in recent times, and not because it is a well-designed language, which its not.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, for the sake of this page or two on my 1984 happenings, from 1980 until the start of 1984, I'd carved out a well-considered local reputation in the organisation, mainly as a database expert, on the then new technology called an RDBMS - the Relational DataBase Management System. I'd designed and built the organisations main reporting system, named ARTEMIS - the Australian Road Transport Executive Management Information System - and got a bit of kudos in the process, including a couple of research papers, and a Profile in the dominant Australian Road Research Journal [3,4].

By the start of 1984 it was time for me to go into the CBD (the city centre), to get a new tech role and a big jump in salary for the year, to put our personal travel plans in place for the following year (1985). My wife stayed put at RMIT and I went to a couple of job interviews. The first one I got, was with the State electricity supplier, the SECV - the State Electricity Commission of Victoria. It was headquartered in William St, with about 7,000 people in the building, of the approximate 11,000 employees State wide. They were mainly an IBM MVS system shop, running on an Amdahl mainframe, accessed predominantly via dumb terminals, but a few graphical IBM workstations in the engineering departments, and there were even a few of those new fangled IBM PCs kicking about!

The first job interview was with two people, one was David Knipe, a rising star manager fairly high up, and the second, whose name I can't recall, but he was the 'bad cop' in an apparent 'good cop, bad cop' interview process. That went ok, I thought, and sure enough I got a second round interview, this time with two people in the actual department where the job was located, namely as a Senior Analyst Programmer, in the Forecasting and Tariffs Department. It was a new department, as the SECV had been instructed by the newish Cane Government, to do some 'actual' forecasting of the States energy needs, instead of just using the federal GDP forecast as a rough proxy. Again, it seemed to be a 'good cop, bad cop' interview process. The good cop this time was another David, a Mr. Lukies, a very congenial senior engineer who would be the immediate supervisor, while the 'bad cop' was the manager of the department, a Mr Anderson. Well, this interview didn't go well at all, as I had a standup argument with my would-be department manager! This was very unusual for me, as I generally get along with about 98% of people in a given organisation, but this guy really ruffled my feathers, and me his, apparently. It was about a question he posed as to whether I considered myself to be an Engineer, according to my university qualification, or a Programmer, which was "some lesser endeavour, of which the word 'professional' shouldn't be associated.", was his general drift. This was a time when the Professional Associations of Engineers were proactively considering the idea of placing the letter Eng. in front of a Member's name, much like a doctor uses the prefix Dr, for example, Eng. Anderson instead of Mr. Anderson ;|

I'm afraid I couldn't take that seriously at all, and besides the slight chuckle I couldn't hold back, I said that I definitely sided with the Computer Programmers as my cohort of Professionals, rather than with the Engineers. And from there on it escalated into a standup argument, from which I was happy to leave about 30 minutes in, along with any prospects of working at the SECV! It was apparently a seriously hard-core engineering outfit, through and through, I thought to myself. We had a term for it on the Monash campus - there were small 'e' engineers and capital 'E' engineers. The former had societal and cultural interests beyond just the Engineering.

Well, you could have blown me over with a feather when I received the job offer from the SECV. I couldn't quite believe it. "That manager must have just set me up", I was thinking - "he really knew how to play his bad cop role in the interview process, I'd fallen for it, you really had to hand it to him!" was my misguided thought at the time. Not so, as it turned out. That guy certainly loved an argument, and apparently I'd proved I could rise to such an occasion, when necessary. It wasn't in the job ad, but clearly, it was this guys main attribute that a candidate should have!

Before taking up the new position at the SECV, a between-jobs opportunity came up, to travel to New Zealand for 4 weeks R & R. This seemed like a good 'test-case' of our ability to travel well in another country for a period of time, given that New Zealand was so much closer to Australia than the EU, not only in distance, but clearly the two cultures were very similar. It was to be with a couple to whom we had both been great friends since high school days, who were budding sailors. Chris had sailed mainly a 14 foot catamaran in the Eildon Weir, a very large freshwater reservoir, between our respective home towns, Alexandra and Mansfield. And he and Sally were preparing to start sailing in an ocean going yacht, like one they would eventually buy, to pursue their own long term travel dreams. So, our first 2 weeks in New Zealand were in the Bay of Islands, on a hired 35 foot sailboat, with a cabin that slept 6 if need be, and full cooking facilities for our daily catch. Chris was the Captain and I was the Navigator (a dual role arrangement that reappeared several times in my IT career), and the other two were more flexible. Did I mentioned there is about 80 islands in the said bay!? The navigation was very manual - charts, rulers, compass and protractor - no digital devices onboard at that point in time, so I was a bit constrained. Anyway, that all went well. We'd driven a hire car up to Opua on the Bay of Island, to board the moored yacht, and I got the short-straw to drive the car back to Whangarei, the nearest car-return point about 70K South! No Uber back then, not even a taxi, so I had to hitchhike back to the others on the boat - a common mode of transport in the 1970s and 80s.

We lived on the daily catch - Chris and Sally were also spearfishing divers, and caught some really good fish and lobsters. The place was teaming with fish. The local indigenous were allowed to net a beach when and wherever they pleased, and each time they did, the nets were weighed down with bucketloads of fish! Hard to starve in the Bay of Islands. We even ventured out of the Bay, and headed up the coast some distance to Whangaroa - in a spectacular inlet, which would be a tourist drawcard in any other country (NZ has such an abundance of scenery), yet there was just one pub for a counter meal, and a few houses there. One thing I did learn, was that sailing a boat then wasn't nearly as technical (digitally) as I would have liked it to be, so that was my last venture at sea in a yacht, as navigator. Whereas our co-sailors, Chris and Sally continued on with many a voyage in the years post-NZ, in a succession of yachts they owned and upgraded. E.g. they came 3rd in the Sydney to Osaka Yacht Race, not too long after. So, us other two landlubbers had been in really good hands, the whole while in the relative pond-like conditions that is the Bay of Islands. That adventure rocket-boosted our travel plans for 1985.

Our other 2 weeks in New Zealand were south of Auckland in a camper van, mainly around the spectacular South Island. The bookings for flights, yacht, and campervan, where all done through travel agents, in-person, or phone and fax - no commercial Internet in those days. Daily travel plans and were day-by-day follow your nose. Apart from the South Island we also took in places like Rotorua and Wellington, the NZ capital, on the North Island. Again, no computers in sight, throughout the journey. I became acutely aware of what computers could do to revolutionise the travel industry - just one of the many areas of human endeavour that 'really needed' computerisation!

However, that 'back-to-nature' trip san-technology, was appreciated by me over the next 5 months once back at the SECV, where I was doing 10 hour days, on their Amdahl mainframe, with a State Government Budget deadline pushing the forecasting and tariff model hacks (via several programming languages, COBOL, PL1 and SAS***), I was required to do, ultimately for the State Treasury, as the SECV was highly profitable and contributed significantly to the State government budget each year (this was before it was carved up and privatised, in the following years, by the Kennet government). I have an earlier blog article on my SECV experience across the rest of that year, here: https://www.digitalfriend.org/blog/month2020-01.html

Later in the year one of the research papers about my experience building one of the first large Relational DBMS applications, got accepted into the main ACS (Australian Computer Society) conferences, and published in the proceedings [4].

I clearly remember presenting at the Conference, but more so, the conference dinner, which was in the revolving restaurant at the top of Sydney Tower Eye, the tallest structure in Sydney, then and now. As a Speaker I was sitting on a table with Roger Clark, a key organiser of the event and renowned a Australian Computer Professional (I certainly recall his input into the Hawke government's controversial attempt at an Australian ID Card in 1988, which never got up … a story that deserves another blog article). It was the night of a severe storm in Sydney. The view out the window was just fog as we were in the clouds. The lightning flashed and the thunder rumbled on into the night for hours, about one flash per second. I walked back to my hotel later in the evening, through overflowing water halfway up to my knees. My shoes were shot. The city was awash - nothing like the sunny blue sky and scant clothing in the conference brochure! However, the year was near its end, and 1985 was getting very close. My anticipation for a big year-long travel adventure was building.

Steve Goschnick (gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org)

Notes:

*The Fortran language is making something of a come-back these days. E.g. On the Tiobe.com Index of Top Programming Languages, its currently about 12th and still rising up the ladder. It has been modernised here and there, over the years, for example here are the standard versions that came before and after Fortran77: it was developed at IBM by a team of 10 lead by John Backus and released in 1957; an ANSI Standard was developed in 1966 to stop the spread of different dialects, thereafter called Fortran66; the version I first learnt was Fortran77, which gained a Character data type, together with many related string functions which made it highly useful beyond just Science and Mathematic domains, and structured programming support via block IF and block ELSE statements; Fortran90 which notably added Modules to better organise ones code into separately compiled units, 31 character variable names up from a mere 6, recursive procedure calls, pointers, operator overloading, Case statements, and so on; Fortran95 addressed features to improve performance and avoid some problems, e.g. Allocatable arrays instead of promoting pointer arrays; it gained Object-Orientation in Fortran2003, also referred to as Modern Fortran, interoperability with C (and hence, many other languages), sub-modules to hide ones valuable code, access to OS environment variables and commands, i.e. it became a 21st century programming language that year; concurrent programming was added, including coarrays, in Fortran2008 to take better advantage of multi-core chips; the 2018 and 2023 Fortran standards are minor enhancements. Fortran's current rising popularity is most likely due to its efficient matrix computations, very useful for Generative AI number crunching using graphic chipsets such as those from Nvidia.

** A Fortran joke (the necessary backstory: In Fortran77 variable names that started with the letters 'I' through to 'N' were by default Integers, while names that started with the rest of the alphabet were Real): "In Fortran, God is Real."

*** SAS - a Statistical package with its own internal programming language - much like SPSS. SAS is currently up to Version 15, is over 50 years old, and is owned by the SAS Institute Inc. See at https://sas.com. It has been, at various times, the largest privately owned software company in the world (including in 2023), and was one of the fastest growing companies in the US in the 1980s. Its owners are currently targeting an IPO in 2025. It's trying to take its analytic user base into the current Generative AI revolution with "SAS Viya Workbench is intended for building AI models by using programming languages such as Python, R, and SAS. App Factory, on the other hand, can be used for creating AI-based applications" . . . See: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2334798/sas-viya-analytics-suite-gets-saas-based-ai-app-development-tools.html

References: my early research papers in Transport Engineering & Database Systems

1. P. Dumble & S.B. Goschnick (1980). Some Improvements to Current Practices of Estimating Individual Choice Models with Existing Data. Proceedings 6th. Australian Transport Research Forum, Brisbane, pp 449-480.
2. Goschnick, S.B. (1980). The Development of a Database for Individual Choice Models. Australian Road Research Board, Report AIR 350-2, 51 pages, including 2 tables and 11 diagrams.

   

3. S.B Goschnick (1983). Research in Progress: ARTEMIS - The Application of a Database Management System to Research Project Reporting at ARRB. Australian Road Research, 13(3), September 1983. Pp226-233. [Nb: In Profile, p242, same issue of Australian Road Research].
4. S.B. Goschnick (1984). DBMS (Data Base Management Systems) in Research Project Management. Proceedings of the Australian Computing Conference, Sydney, Nov. pp 179-191.

The Local where Locals Matter, or not?

Mon, 3 Jul 2023 10:17:20 +1000

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

The City fringe post-Covid, where Country meets Suburb, which business-style will win out? How does your Local measure up?

My father was an unlikely success in business. He went from Farmer to Service Station Owner in a country town, over a short period of time, and so all the conventional rules of business were mostly unknown to him. From cows and mutton on the hoof, to petrol pumps, hot hamburgers and cold milkshakes indoors. As a microcosm of his approach, I remember my mother and his business partner complaining to him about lopping off another 5 feet of her garden hose and giving it to yet-another stranger who ran out of petrol down the road, usually a city person unused to long country miles and the distant-spaced service centres. Off they went with a can of fuel in one hand, and a piece of her garden hose in the other, sometimes at no cost to them at all. They usually returned to fill up and paid up, but not always. He did the same with tools and lost many a Sidchrome spanner. That was typical of his approach. The customer was always right and needed service. He was generous, trusting in strangers to a fault, he liked a yarn, and cleaned people's windscreens way after it was considered no longer a part of the expected service. He was buying wholesale petrol at a figure well above what company-owned service stations in the City were retailing it for - just one of the reasons the petrol supply company couldn't understand his growing demand upon their tankers.

In the city he would have gone broke, but in a country town his business thrived and grew. Reputation matters in the country, much more so than in the city - being kind to people both sides of the counter, counts. Upset a city customer and another one is likely to come along anyway. Its hard to cross the road for the cars going by. Furthermore, the amount of young people straight out of school looking for work experience in the city these days, allows for a lot of employee churn*. Many a city business exploits that to the detriment of many of our young people starting out in the working world. Those young people are gaining the wrong sort of experiences for our society in the long term.

This all came to my mind when my youngest son was taking on his first regular job. He was the first of my lot not to go to uni straight after high school, to take a gap year or two. So, I really had to recall my distant teenage casual work experiences (of which I had many - paper round, making pallets - the forklift variety, planting trees, erecting fences, hay carting, constructing seed containers, cooking hamburgers, serving petrol, cleaning camping ground shower blocks, surveyors assistant, digging drains - the 2 metre variety with a Kato, and so on), to give him some useful advice. It was advice that came my way from my father back then, in the country proper.

Belgrave (including Heights and South - more so) was once a country town too but now they are on the city fringe, its half-suburban. There are many people here that have been locals for 3 and 4 generations, and then there are many others that come and go as their kids pass into and then out of the local Primary Schools. So its sort of half-country half-suburban in that regard and in others too.

Back in the day, my non Anglo-Celtic surname attracted the usual degree of flack in country Australia, as it had been for my father and for his father before him, and of course, as it has for many Australians old and new. So, one of his good pieces of general advice regarding work, was about countering perceived bias against you. He simply said (paraphrased):

"Put your head down, work hard, do what you're told, don't worry what other co-workers are doing or saying or receiving, don't show too much initiative too early, and eventually, any initial biases will become irrelevant and you will be appreciated for who you are and what you can do. You will invariably cop some crap along the way, but you will advance on merit and attitude. Give it some good time. If you don't, if they don't - if your qualities aren't recognised in that time - then the employer isn't worth your employ anyway. Their loss, because I know how good you are."

Well, that advice served me well across my whole career, and I believe it is still very good advice in current times - up until you are about 50 years old... After that, you are expected to either: be the boss; or be well-placed financially in your own circumstances - i.e. many people used to retire at 55 in days gone by, and now, they are still expected to have that financial fall-back at that age, despite the Oz Government wanting everyone to work until they're 70. But I digress...

So, off he went with that re-worked advice, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, stacking shelves and serving customers at the check-out... It went well for some months but the biases weren't going away. Everyone makes assumptions dealing with a new person. It is a necessity as you can't know a person from day one. It is only when the assumptions aren't altered as the facts accrue that an actual bias is revealed. He didn't like the football-coach approach to management. Sure, I'd had football coaches in the Under-16s who yelled their heads off, and that was why they were football coaches in the under-16s comp. As he asked for and tried to take on more compliant instructions to achieve the desired outcomes, the 'coach' became worse. He was taking my advice to 'hang in there and do a good job, ask for advice on doing things better' but that just seemed to exacerbate his situation, rather than help it, which to me is a tell-tail sign of actual bias. There was potentially more to this than just his youthful inexperience of work, so I thought I should get my own gauge of it as unobtrusively as possible. It didn't take long for me to see he wasn't exaggerating. This owner-manager wanted him gone. I concurred with his assessment and agreed he should take his skills and good attitude elsewhere, rather than suffer daily.

Covid hasn't helped - when the Vic State government put in a 5k radius travel curfew in Melbourne, the outer suburbs ended up with many a monopoly service, raking in the money. Some businesses had never seen such good sales, ever, pre-Christmas included, any Christmas on record. To their great credit, most didn't price gouge at all, during Covid, and they catered well for the increased demand upon their physically constrained premises. But, when that 5k travel limit was disbanded, it was back to substantial competition and a drop in custom for local businesses. Prices became more competitive, margins more important, sales dropped, and existing positions more coveted and defended. This is a city fringe dynamic more so than in the densely populated inner city areas or even the middle-distance suburbs, where competition never totally disappeared.

I have long enjoyed living on the outer fringes of Melbourne. Coming from the country and initially going to the city for a university education and then to work in it. The city fringe is a nice in-between environment wrt residential quality-of-life. Post-Covid, the jury is still out on working conditions in many businesses. It will be interesting to see if that country success factor - i.e. a good reputation and a caring attitude, to both customer and employee, in local business - the approach that served my father so well, wins out over a cutthroat city approach to endless customers and an endless queue of young people coming out of school and looking for work. Of course, reputation is also king in the city, in the long term. Its the shorter-term where shortcuts in management, cut down young expectations, and in doing so, lessen the strength of our community over time.

I wish him well in his next working venture - may he get a boss next time around like the many I've experienced over the years - professional, people-person people, those that nurture new talent rather than squander human potential, and one that appreciates good manners and a great attitude to both customers and co-workers alike, in the store and out the back **.

Steve Goschnick, B.E.(Civil), M.Eng.Sc.(Research).

Postscript:

* Young employee 'churn' is not that uncommon, unfortunately. And not just in Australia, here's an article about it in the UK, for instance:

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230111-the-companies-that-churn-through-young-workers

** He did get a much much better boss in his second and current position. An owner boss that is indeed one of those rarer "professional, people-person people, those that nurture new talent rather than squander human potential, and one that appreciates good manners and a great attitude to both customers and co-workers alike, in the store and out the back". He's gone from the worst sort of boss to the best sort. Still in the food business, still in the Hills (Kallista this time), but serving Tea, scones, great coffee and brunch, rather than shelf-stacking and the checkout.

So, Who's the Screamer?

Tue, 2 Jan 2023 18:11:30 +1000

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

My goodness the ABC has such a fine line to walk these days!

I was talking popular post-Covid travel destinations with me teenager kids when Romania crossed our screens. "So what do you know about Romania?" one put a question my way. Not much. A long-ago work associate came from there and he had likened Romania to Australia! "How so?" I'd asked back then, perplexed, just as they asked me now. "Australia started out as a penal colony for the British Empire, and Romania started out as a penal colony for the Roman Empire. Same roots" he'd replied, a worryingly narrow assessment in both cases.

Apart from that relayed insider view, I'd consumed news in the time of Chychesque's demise, the communist Romanian dictator put up against a wall and shot on Christmas day 1989. He'd tried to escape the mob in his helicopter, just before Romania turned to democracy in 1990. The citizenry had their reasons. Under the dictator a quarter of the population were spying on the other three quarter's for the communist government. It could be a family member, or not. No one was ever sure who was reporting who, nor for what, or whether it was factual. At one stage Chychesque had ordered all gas heating to be turned off after 6pm, to conserve a diminishing resource in a diabolically cold winter in Bucharest, the capital. Then, to catch out and punish the rule-breakers he ordered an underling Administrator to turn off the main supply valve, well after the start of curfew time, and then had it turned back on some time later, gassing all of the sleeping rule-breakers in their own homes. News like that does stick in the mind for decades and probably forever, but more so for his citizens on the ground and their relatives in it.

Perhaps Chychesque's most enduring legacy which modern Romanians are surely happiest to show tourists, is the building he pretty much bankrupted the country on constructing it, now known as the Palace of the Parliament. Its dimensions are second only to the Pentagon in size (See Wikipedia, search Palace of the Parliament), but in new marble fashioned in old Romanesque style, harking back to those empire roots. A million cubic metres of marble, no less. 3,500 tonnes of crystal in the 480 chandeliers, and so on. . . Unsurprisingly, Rupert Murdoch tried to buy it for $1billion. It was valued at 4 times that, unsurprisingly.

But hey, lighten-up, it's New Years Day 01-01-2023 and now with the teenagers off on their New Year adventures with friends, time for more pleasant thoughts and memories. . . However, I'd just then turned on the 7 o'clock ABC News, out of habit.

The Newsreader announces that domestic violence peaks around New Years day, and she then relays a directive from further up the hierarchy. She advised that "All neighbours should be on the lookout for unusual signs, unusual noises, signs of different behaviour, anything out of the ordinary, please Call 000" . . . Neighbours can get a bit tetchy this time of year. Yes, there has been some horrendous cases of domestic violence, and those same cases are often repeated 3 and 4 times and more, heading the News more often than not - I hope these people (National News directors) are basing this repetition broadcasting on well-founded Science (as in, helping to reduce the problem, not adding to it - I have the same concern regarding relaying gun massacres, not even from our Country, never mind our State). And sure, the less serious outcome cases are many . . . however, this is a city (Melbourne) of 5 million people! Another 5 million in Sydney, another 2 million in Brisbane, and so on, serviced by this national broadcaster. There is always some level of crime with those numbers of people, no matter how good your society is. My family like most, don't have any experience of family violence, across the generations. For most people domestic violence is an alien concept. In that regard its like addiction to gambling - if you don't have it, its really hard to understand how people fall under its flawed thinking. Do we have to have all 20+ million neighbours at the phone ready, for any noise out-of-the-usual? . . .

It was 37 degrees this New Years Day and no air-conditioner here thank you - lets face it, there's only 5 or 6 days a year in Melbourne when you really need it. All the windows are open and the sounds in the dead of night go a looong way. And right then, this great big huntsman spider suddenly appears on the wall, enlivened by the heat. I'd usually swat him with a substantial thong as a fly-swatter would simply bounce off this brute. But I quickly abandon that idea given the neighbourly noise it would generate, and so the very little buddhist in me wins that one and now we will sleep uneasily tonight amongst the hairy spiders.

Figure 1: Hut! hut! hut! ...

Shortly after that the wife drops a frozen chicken onto the wooden floor as she opens the over-full freezer door. Bang! That sort of sound reverberates downhill over the road and across three or four neighbours on that side. Very out-of-the-ordinary! We both look at each other fearing the police being called and knocking on our door in the middle of the night. We better not thaw-out the chicken after all, it may well be needed as evidence.

How many noises out-of-the-ordinary can a person make? You wouldn't want to be a screamer because it would be bloody hard to achieve a good orgasm without the possibility of a tactical police squad rolling up, or a swat team coming down from a night-visioned overhead helicopter, beckoned by a mischievous neighbour driven by mirth, envy, or a need for mayhem. Half an acre just isn't enough space anymore, never mind quarter. Makes you wonder what people do for spontaneity in the flats and appartments of the inner city.

I can now see why a lot of people are feeling over governed and over observed, by technology, and now by the neighbours too. Any government in the next 5 years thats over zealous with a flurry of new post-Covid Rules, is going to get thrown out of office, regardless of any other policies. But hey, lets get back to some light entertainment. The TV guide has it that the 'Alien' movie is on Channel 9 later in the evening. At significant volume that will put any of those nosey ABC enlisted phone wielding neighbours into heightened alert across the city!

Before then though, without turning the dial, we watched Baz Lerman's 1992 vintage 'Strickly Ballroom'. This guy nailed the need for the Me Too movement, way back in 1992. Way ahead of his time was Baz - well worth a look at it, if you missed it tonight. Dated, but the dancing is still dazzling. I can see why Deb Balls have endured despite much effort to cancel them. Turns out that the young male star - Paul Mercurio - entered politics in the relatively recent VIC State Election. He won his seat amongst those of the returning party. It was a surprising election result in terms of the overall margin, but not to anyone that ignores the mainstream media which mostly comes out of Sydney these days, including the ABC. The Opposition's campaign was very 'mickey-mouse'. 'Mat' shortened from Matthew in the last month of the lead up, to match that of the 3-letter incumbent 'Dan', whom he'd hoped to replace, was clearly ill-advised. The Mat TV Ad I'd seen on a local station, which, to any media-savvy viewer, was foretelling of their landslide demise, again. It showed us local hero shots, where he'd gone to school, where he pulled petrol as a teenager and so on, before being so Famous - but was he famous yet!? It begged the question in the viewer's mind. No he wasn't. Then, more local hero shots, followed by "my wife is Ukrainian" - How many votes would that pull in suburban Australia with skyrocketing mortgage interest rates and food prices, without it looking desperate!? . . .

As in Aussie Rules Football we expect a closer result than that in our elections! Forget the 'young country' moniker, we are the 6th oldest Democracy in the world for godsake! As a mature Democracy, our elections have reached the elevated level of Sport. We expect a bit of excitement, a long evening of commentary from two sides who both realistically think they are going to win, right up until about midnight. In short, we expect a close, hard-fought campaign and finish!

By the end of the movie I was thinking 'Geez, if the ABC had show Strictly Ballroom before the election, there would have been even louder shouts of the left-wing bias out there.'

The poor old ABC really has to tread a fine and difficult line these days, between: community service, political correctness, bearer of moral certitude, entertainer, avoidance of construed political bias, and so on. . . Still, that holiday-shift young newsreader looked troubled by those odd things she had been the mouthpiece for, like a street-corner megaphone on a soap box. As I was drifting off to sleep I was thinking - 'Perhaps the young will come to our rescue. But then again, why do we senior citizens keep transferring more weight and expectations upon the shoulders of the young?' . . . But then I quickly did a contrary disturbing double-take! 'Maybe it was a relatively young news director/editor that set about putting ABC watchers on alert, mobile in hand, for unusual noises from them next door? Afterall, Mao's red guard were teenagers and they were severely badass woke when they cancelled the Four Olds during the Chinese Cultural Revolution - namely, the destruction of: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas.' Perish the thought! . . . I really need some good sleep and its only 01-01-2023.

Steve Goschnick (gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org)

You Can't Rush Art & Outsourcing the Inner Critic

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:12:29 +1000

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

A long time ago when I was 15, I made a complete Chess Set, board and box in my woodwork class at high school. I still have the Chess pieces - see figure 1 below.

Apart from my gained skills in woodwork, it taught me a few things about life in general, including that the design and creation of things that are good and worthwhile, usually takes a lot of time. A lesson well condensed in a line from Toy Story, that: 'You can't rush Art'. That, of course, is likely to clash with the values of the modern world where speed is further up the ladder than it should be.

However, time is time and any rearrangement of values doesn't generate more time, and so doing one thing often happens at the expense of another. That was the case back in my Year 10 auxiliary lessons from woodwork, where I had to drop a second term subject in order to finish off my Chess set, board and box, in Woodwork term 2. The costs to me included: needing to drop the Cookery subject with later consequences such as - when I began cooking my own meals later on in 2nd year uni, I often had just steak and eggs, where other people in the shared kitchen had more balanced meals were left aghast at mine. Another cost was that it gave me the chance to score a maximum 9 Honours that year instead of the 10 I landed the year before.

Figure 1: Self-made Chess Set.

My straight honours in all subjects in middle high school were an early indication that I would always have trouble specialising on just a few things - another value that modern society doesn't rate very highly. Society very much prefers to put you in an easily managed and understood box. In retrospect, I was on fire in middle high school, my unquenchable desire to learn (something you can't teach) was a consequence of several things: two of my very good friends were killed in a car crash and I wanted to change the world for the better in some meaningful way; and secondly, I had my first relationship with a steady girlfriend. How these led to that, takes a little more explanation.

During the morning of the evening my two friends were killed, they'd come up to my place to coax me into hitch-hiking out to see the local football match at a nearby town (Thornton, about 13k from Alexandra) - hitch-hiking was not too unusual a mode of transport back then in small towns where everyone knew something of everyone. I was sitting on a large cube stone-lined post at the front of our property, watching the cars streaming by, up from the city en route to the water-world that was Lake Eildon. Many were impressive cars and often towing powerful glittering speedboats, heading out for a weekend of skiing. It was the age of the petrol-head and country towns in Australia were in the full grip of it (e.g. think American Graffiti and The Fonz but with Australian-made cars).

Teenage kids from large families were often relatively free agents in country towns, and so whether to go with them or not, was pretty much a personal choice. I didn't want to go, but they put collective pressure on me - there were four of them pushing all the buttons that peers know how to push. However, I stuck to my choice to not go with them. It was the ride back from that town late in the evening, with the four of them across the back seat in a souped-up Holden piloted by a drunk driver, when it slammed into a tree at very high speed. The two near the doors died, the other two cushioned in the middle between them lived. The driver's wife and child in the front seat also died. It was a major tragedy in a small country town, one of many such tragedies right across rural Australia before drink-driving and seatbelt laws came into existence. School counselling in those days consisted of: lining up the whole school as a guard of honour to watch the hearses go by en route to the cemetery. Personally, it was unsurprising that post university, I ended up working for the national peak road research body - the Australian Road Research Board. Nor that I've never let peer-group pressure override my decisions since that day forward.

How the early girlfriend relationship figured in the firing of my intellectual side so much, was harder to understand (I'd gone from a rabbit trapping, duck plucking hunter with one or two haphazard school honours per year, to 10 honours and class dux in rapid short time). It was at that same research organisation many years later where I got a key psychological insight into it. As a national research organisation, the place was advanced in many things, including the welfare of staff. As most people were desk-bound all day at their mainframe-powered computer terminals, there were organised exercise choices in the morning and afternoon tea/coffee breaks, to keep one alert and in shape. The main offering was called the 'Stretching and Breathing' session led by a wonderful human being with all the flexibility of a yoga guru and in appropriate attire. One day she said to me: "I never feel embarrassed in front of a big group of people, and I've seen that you don't either." In her case it was demonstrated in leading this group of academic high flyers through low down contortion routines. In my case it was public speaking, evident in the running of courses and seminars to all and sundry. I had never had a problem with public speaking, it certainly didn't make me nervous, and so I was perplexed when I first learned that it was generally one of people's biggest fears in life, in Australia at least.

So I asked her what was her secret to such a lack of embarrassment? "I'm an epileptic" she said, "so, after dealing with having fits at school, at random, nothing else much bothers me in public." Mmm, that surprised me - I'd been unaware that she was epileptic, and surprised at its positive affect in her later life. She then asked me "What's yours?" I didn't know but it had long been a puzzle to me. Her story made me think more deeply upon my own early schooling. I'd been moved through 4 different Primary Schools in my first 6 years of schooling (no kinder or prep years in those days). The first 3 were in rural Queensland where the primary and secondary students all went to the same school - years 1 to 12. Very few did 11 and 12, but nonetheless, the school yard and the school bus could be very intimidating and sometimes brutal places, particularly with my non-anglo surname. The way to deal with it, or at least the way I dealt with it, was to criticise myself before anyone else got the chance to. That had led to a giant but hidden inner critic.

What happens in early relationships is that one is most attracted to someone else that may well have an explicit trait or two that you have hidden in your own psyche. My first such serious relationship was indeed with someone who was a great critic, a critic that was for me not against, someone that was a natural in quality control - thats where good critics are most effective - Quality Control. Once you are in a serious relationship where you have a hidden but powerful sub-personality, such as a hidden inner critic, it no longer has such an inhibiting influence on you, it has been outsourced to someone who's much more overt and professional at it. So, in my case, once in just such a serious relationship my self esteem and confidence skyrocketed. If I overstepped the mark anywhere, someone else close to me would tell me about it, so I didn't need to be so cautious in striding forward.

Getting back to other tacit lessons from making the Chess Set, another was about the benefits of old versus new technologies. I had made the box with the chess board depicted on top of it, all done in thin wood veneers of two different colours. The woodwork Teacher and Craftsman, a relatively old gentleman named Herby Friedel, was originally from Germany and he retained the accent and many woodwork techniques from his former country and era. He wouldn't let me use a modern PVA-based glue (i.e. they can stick wood together stronger than the original wood) to hold down the veneers - I had to use the old technique and traditional glue. He gave me a pot of warmed-up glue that was made from horse hooves. After you stuck down a piece, say a single square on the chess board, you had to rub it with a silver spoon (silver so it wouldn't mark the wood), to maintain the temperature of the glue via friction, then slowly slowly reduce the motion over 5 to 10 minutes, necessary to let the glue cool slowly enough to set properly.

Needless to say, the Chess board in the figure is not my original, since its veneer panels peeled off long ago, but is a more recent import from SE Asia. Had I been allowed to use a modern glue designed to bind wood at the cellulose fibre level, I would still have my original box and board intact, to match my intact pieces. And, I probably would have got to do that Cookery subject I sorely missed out on to many peoples' detriment. The old ways and technologies have very often been superceded with better products and methods, for good reason. Just not always. You can't rush Art, or fundamental Research for that matter, but you can save time and resources through technology and innovation in the Crafts, in Engineering and with incremental Scientific advances too.

Steve Goschnick (gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org)

The Late Premier 'Honest John' Cain, Electricity and Computing at the SECV - 1984

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 17:29:21 +1000

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

Today I stumbled across the web page for The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards - touted as 'The nation's best writing & Australia's richest literary prize' - on the website:

https://www.wheelercentre.com/projects/victorian-premier-s-literary-awards-2020

It caught my eye that these awards were inaugurated by The Honourable John Cain, Premier of Victoria in 1985, some 35 years ago. In doing so, that reminded me that in the recent hasty days in late December 2019, when everybody was trying to tidy-up from office parties, the office, and do some shopping before the Xmas break, that the very same John Cain had passed away. It was with less fanfare than he deserved or would have got at a different time of year**. It was just before Christmas on the 23rd of December 2019. The 3-term winning Premier - a record for the Labor Party - reached 88 years of age and had left a significant mark on the State of Victoria, Australia, way beyond just those literary awards.

Personally, I had always preferred to call him by his nick-name during his time in power, which was: Honest John. Honesty, being an unusual trait for a politician, anytime and anywhere, was a large factor in why he had won 3 elections straight. I was a young technocrat at the time of his first election, an Analyst/Programmer. John Cain had caused a lot of meticulous computer work to come my way throughout most of 1984 at the SECV - the then State Electricity Commission of Victoria, a large State-owned monopoly. He had won his first election in 1982 and by 1984 the SECV was undergoing something of a revolution, at his direction. Such state-owned enterprises were thereafter deemed to pay a dividend from their profits into the State's coffers, which was 10% of $100 million by 1984 from the SECV alone, very good money at the time. They had set up a new Department called 'Forecasting & Tariffs' and I was one of the new hires at the start of 1984, adding 'Senior' to Analyst Programmer, and raising my salary by about 33% over my prior role as an Analyst/Programmer at the ARRB (Australian Road Research Board).

Not only was the department new but the very concept of 'forecasting' was new at the SECV. Previously, the SECV had divined the 'forecast' energy needs for the State of Victoria, directly from the national GDP forecast coming out of the Federal government's Treasury forecast for the expected growth for Australian GDP (Gross Domestic Product). They simply multiplied Australian GDP by a 'magic number' to determine what electricity they would need to generate in the coming years! There had been no allowance for new technologies, nor the forthcoming more efficient electrical appliances in the pipeline, nor for advances in power transmission technology, nor variance in the growth of Victoria versus the whole country, nor the changing mix of population and industry within Victoria, and so on.

As bad as that was it wasn't the worst of it. Prior to this change at the SECV, they had actually started preliminary work (secretly) on siting a nuclear power station somewhere in East Gippsland (the place that just got burned down by massive bushfires on New Years Day 2020), to cover that future expected demand - all based on the 'back-of-a-matchbox' linear extrapolation from the Federal GDP forecast! So, John Cain's new government changed all that, and thereafter the SECV did some proper energy forecasting. And with that same clean sweep of the broom the new managers also wanted to rationalise the many different electricity tariffs to a more equitable and simplified set of tariffs. E.g. there were about two dozen different tariffs and some customers where paying way way less than others, for the electricity they used. E.g. there was the flat-rate 'F' tariff which was a 'Commercial Cooking' tariff known colloquially as the Fish'n'Chip tariff, who paid as little as 1/20th what an average general domestic (GD tariff) customer was paying for a kilowatt-hour. Another one I remember clearly was the 'hot-water heating' time-of-use (TOU) tariff, which was very low, that kicked in at 2am when most of industry was not in need of electricity. It was soon discovered that the meters at the domestic dwellings, which were mechanical clock-based, were all set at different times instead of just the designated 2am. However, when new management decreed that the meter department go out and synchronise them, as per the published tariff, the long-time engineers pointed out that such an action would cause a spike in demand at 2am which would be much greater than the peak demand in the middle of a working day caused by industry! I.e. the 'old hands' on the ground had deliberately unsynchronised the meters across the State, to avoid such a calamity (and in doing so possibly saved Victoria/Australia from going down the nuclear power station path).

Figure 1: Loy Yang Power Station A. (N.b. There is still 400+ years worth of brown coal in Gippsland at the current rate-of-consumption)

The new enlightened management wanted to merge this mishmash of inequitable historical tariffs, towards just a handful of much more equitable tariffs. However, this is where 'Honest John' intervened. He had promised the voters, that during a transition to a more equitable system, "No electricity customer will receive a rise in their electricity bills greater than the CPI (Consumer Price Index - the measure of inflation) in a given year."

This led to me being tasked with guaranteeing that Honest John would indeed be keeping his promise with-respect-to electricity prices, even as the SECV was streamlining the score of ancient tariffs toward a handful of 'modern' equitable tariffs, also decreed by John Cain. Clearly, given the large levels of entrenched inequity such as with the aforementioned Fish'and'Chips tariff, the transitions would have to happen over a number of years (a 5-year plan), via a series of little-step changes, each and all of which, would not invalidate the Premier's public pledge regarding electricity prices and the CPI, for any single customer bill!

I got access to the previous 12 months of billing records, which amounted to over 9 million bills - domestic customers were billed quarterly while industry customers were billed monthly - which lived on magnetic tape, as only the previous bill and the forthcoming bills were keep on fast access hard-disk, itself a valuable storage commodity in 1984. I set about taking random samples of about 10,000 bills to keep on disk, to run prospective tariffs against, which involved the new forecasting models too, then, when one seemed like a winner from all angles (i.e. from numerous managers, policy creators, and forecasters), I would run it against the full 9 million records held on tape, to verify that Honest John wasn't lying, not for any single customer on any single bill issued over the previous year. This wasn't a directive that my manager had devised, no, it had come through him straight from on high, from Honest John himself. His nickname was far from tongue-in-cheek. He was the genuine article. He meant what he said, and did what he said he would do, as far as humanly possible.

While the 10,000 record samples were nicely handled within SAS (a Statistical Analysis Package with its own built in language - think the 'R' language), I needed better tools to deal with the 9 million records on tape, a sequential and relatively slow medium. I had some trouble getting started on that as I needed to use the PL/1 programming language (an IBM language specific to IBM mainframes and compatibles at the time, optimised for speed on them), and the Computer Services Department would not give me the PL/1 manuals I needed. They required that I do their in-house 5-week 'PL/1 Course' - regardless of my prior programming experience. I certainly didn't have 5 weeks to spare with the State Budget looming, which included that 10% of the (yet-to-be-finalised) forecast profit at the SECV for the following year.

From my terminal I could access all the tools on the SECV mainframe - all the IBM system software simply came with the hardware in those days, so it was all there for free, manual or no manual - so I simply phoned IBM directly outlining my dilemma, and they posted me a set of PL/1 manuals the very next day, and off we went.

As it happens, I ran hundreds of such tariff models before we (the Tariff & Forecasting Department) settled upon those published in the State budget papers in 1984, which was a long and tedious process, and I was the bunny doing the hard yards on that processing. My manager, had keep me highly motivated by promising me that I could design and build a new tariff research modelling tool, based on the knowledge I'd picked up over those long hours and late evenings. About six months in, with budget models all tucked into bed, my time had come for some innovative design and development work, promised to me from early on. I had already researched all the tariff models in all the other Australian states, and several internationally, the most sophisticated of which, were from the US state of California. Even back in 1984 California had small private electricity producers, who were putting energy into the system as well as taking it out - the forerunners of todays solar, wind and other alternative energy generators. They also had very sophisticated time-of-use tariffs and meters to go with them, well beyond the simple mechanic clocks the SECV had set for 2am, pre-1984.

Via such a broad-ranging study I had devised a universal tariff model and designed the new research tool which I tentatively called GENSEL (General Selection). However, my manager wouldn't look at it seriously***, as he now revealed that he had "some great software" back at his former employer (the SEQEB - in Queensland) from years before, that the SECV "could simply purchase off the shelf at a reasonable price". I did an evaluation trip to the SEQEB but their software was highly conventional and little better than the SAS + PL/1 data wrangling tools I'd cobbled together in the previous 6 months, under duress. In short, my manager had proved considerably less honest about tariff modelling tools than Honest John had proven himself time and time again all-round, and so my journey with the SECV didn't extend into 1985.

Postscript: What happened?

The SECV: When I worked at SECV headquarter in William St Melbourne in 1984, there were about 7,000 employees in the building, and about 11,000 employees State-wide (it had already been whittled down from about 19,000 at peak employment). In its drive for efficiency and profits the SECV continued to make a significant contribution to the State governments annual budget, and eventually downsized its total workforce to about 7,000 in total. It had become an extremely valuable asset, and the Kennet Liberal Party government that came after John Cain's Labor government, divided up the SECV's State-wide assets and sold them off to a multitude of private companies. Many of the middle-level managers and admin staff had been made redundant, some with considerable golden handshakes, eventually got jobs back in the newly privatised enterprises that took over the SECV's long built-up infrastructure, coal mines, power stations and business. A controversial example was the Hazelwood Power Station: a brown-coal fired power station said to be the most polluting in the OECD at the time. The SECV were looking to decommission it in 2005, but the Kennet Liberal government sold it to several multinationals for over $2 billion dollars in 1996 "with a projected 40-year operating lifetime". It was eventually decommissioned in 2017. Unbeknown to most people, the Gippsland area within Victoria still has well over 400 years worth of brown coal deposits at the current rate of consumption.

My ICT journey for the rest of the 1980s: I never got to implement my universal tariff modelling tool, as my aforementioned Manager never allowed it. Pissed-off with the fact that the software from SEQEB wasn't fit for our service, he then insisted we stick with the SAS+PL/1 processing I'd thrown together on-the-fly during the lead-up to the 1984 State mid-year budget. So, to keep my brain alive I bought a tiny Commodore64 game console/computer for some fun at home with sprites and other colour graphics, something that the mainframes at work didn't do - they were all text-based terminals. Having been a mainframe-only programmer up until that point in time (6 years), I was genuinely amazed at what you could do on a so-called 'toy' Commodore64 computer, with a local IDE called G-Pascal. At the beginning of 1985 I resigned from the SECV and I took to the road spending 10 months travelling throughout Europe, rarely stopping for more than 2 days in each place, followed by 1 month in the US on the way home. On landing back in Melbourne I got offered a Manager role at the Australian Road Research Board, who'd been my original employer straight out of uni (where I'd become an Analyst Programmer, prior to working for the SECV). The new position was in the Computer Centre of what was a highly computationally intensive, research-oriented organisation, which I took up in early 1986 (staying with them until late in 1989 - as the Manager for PCs and Networks). I also picked up a new Commodore Amiga 1000 en route, which was something like a Mac with 'colour', when the Apple Machintosh was simply Black and White (B&W). I'd wanted IBM PC compatibility too, and I got that via what was called the 'Amiga Sidecar', which plugged into the large, long 'Zorro Slot' along the side of the Amiga, giving me an MS/DOS machine - literally as an add-on. My Sidecar also came with a (then) 'massive' 20 Mbyte hard-drive in it, which I partition between MS/DOS and AmigaDOS. I then started writing and publishing shrink-wrapped (i.e. inexpensive) software packages. As good as the Amiga and AmigaDOS was, the marketplace for software publishing startups was on the MS/DOS based IBM-compatible PCs, and so thats where I ended up writing and publishing my first two commercial software applications, one in Borland's Turbo Pascal, the other in the C language. I registered my software publishing business name - Solid Software - in 1986.

I have some other tech stories from my year at the SECV in the 1984 (the year of Big Brother vs the Macintosh), which I should relate some time - a Preview:

• The SECV had transferred high bill domestic customers to industry tariffs (i.e. people with heated swimming pools and the like), because their quarterly bills had exceeded SECV Billing System maximum limit of $999.99, and to make it smaller, they moved them to an 'Industry' tariff, which were monthly and hence much smaller per bill. The alternative was to redevelop their apparently highly inflexible CICS-based system (CICS is IBM middleware which was designed to support rapid, high-volume processing), with a new 20-man-year effort - Well, that's what their Computer Centre told management . . . i.e. the billing system was dictating policy, instead of the other way around! Not that CICS was a dinosaur about to die . . . Early in 2020 Google made IBM AS/400 apps available in their cloud offerings, which includes current day CICS apps some 50+ years after its initial invention at IBM.
• Loy Yang Power Stations A and B were owned by the SECV back then and were brand new, first coming online in 1984. . . In that year the SECV had a whole mainframe computer dedicated to just modelling the Loy Yang Power Station. It was a 500+ entity relationship data model, the largest such model I'd seen up until that point in time. In 2020 Loy Yang Power Station (A+B) still provides about 50% of Victoria's base load power. Loy Yang 'A' is currently owned by AGL Energy, while 'B' was recently purchased by Chow Tai Fook Enterprises of Hong Kong.

Steve Goschnick (gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org)

** Note: There is a recently announced State Funeral for the former Premier John Cain coming up on the 3rd of Feb 2020.

*** This is a common problem that the Information Modeller and Systems Business Analyst ofter still face today: Using information modelling techniques from first principles in Information Theory, it is often possible to come up with a better information model than that of the domain experts who have been on the ground in that domain for 20 or 30 years - whether its Tariff models or Astronomy they are often reluctant to even look at the newly devised data models. And that had been my SECV Manager's reaction back than: "I've been doing Tariffs structures for 20 years, how could you possibly come up with a universal tariff model after 6 months!"

The first Foundry658 Boot Camp!

Fri, 7 Dec 2018 14:06:10 +1000

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

Over the last 4 weeks my partner and I attended the very first Foundry658 Boot Camp for startups, two and three days per week. We have built up eBook Dynasty .net (a publishing imprint of Solid Software P/L) over the last 5 years, as a two-person show. Via this imprint we have published over 120 books in Chinese, most of which began life in the English language, and many of which Christine personally translated to Chinese (I'm the tech guy, she's the human language expert with a PhD in Chinese Literature and several translation certificates).

The pair of us (and the Home office) are currently the bottleneck in growing the business, so we set about replicating ourselves many times over with a whole platform that can scale what we do, even without us if need be. It was this need to scale the business startup that got us a spot in the first ever Foundry658 Boot Camp - a preliminary workshop that leads to the Foundry658 accelerator: a 3 month programme focused on high-growth potential and market-ready projects in the creative arts.

Foundry658: creative industries accelerator - is a new startup incubator collaboration between the State Library of Vic, Creative Victoria (Creative State Strategy) and ACMI. (http://foundry658.com ). We were in the first of two boot camps. There were 17 teams participating in our boot camp, which culminated in a pitch night (see team snapshot insert), that was impressive, creative and highly varied (said the judging panel).

In our case, we have a three-pronged approach (value propositions in three target segments - got the right jargon now:) with: a platform for authors; translators and other book professionals; a social-networking platform for readers with our very own eBook reader file format (and eReaders) for the Chinese language (and some other languages to follow).

[Nb. in direct contrast to my previous blog in November 2018 on age-discrimination in IT - one of the great advantages of being an Analyst/Programmer of my seniority is having a lack of distractions when writing a complex application like our own ebook format and eReader (desktop, Android, iOS), i.e.: I have the skills and experience and repertoire of my own toolbox built up over 3+ decades of both coding and AI/ICT research - and I will not be diverted from that task via approaches of high-salaried roles coming my way unasked . . . i.e. Such diversionary offers simply don't happen any more in IT when you are over ~50, so you can stay fully-focused on your startup platform, day and night:) ]

Back to the Foundry658 bootcamp: it was excellent value with very experienced presenters, high calibre invited speakers who were all generous in their advice, great venues, thoughtful mentors, challenging exercises, and an excellent set of notes/toolkit from Value Proposition-to-Growth marketing and Pitching - all professionally organised. In particular, it reminded me of the hard lessons that Usability Lab's brought to Designers in double short time, back in my IDEA Lab days: there, a Designer behind a one-way mirror or video camera would see-for-themselves how their website or app interface failed in the hands of real users. In this bootcamp, we got to see how our imagined/stereotype customers, we're not really who the real customers for our services were. Through Customer Validation Testing we were able to overturn a few gross assumptions about the problem we were actually trying to solve.

I thoroughly recommend an application to future Foundry658 boot camps to anyone with a new creative-industries startup idea, or an existing creative-industry-oriented business that is ready to scale, as they will surely run again later in 2019.

Steve Goschnick (gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org)

On Age Discrimination in the IT Workforce

Mon, 3 Dec 2018 21:55:01 +1000 (updated)

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

I'd heard that age discrimination in the job market was rampant (certainly in Australia e.g. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-02/ageism-rampant-discrimination-problem-in-the-workplace/10550704), but wasn't aware of how much it was true until my own personal incident or two or twenty . . .

A few months back, a head hunter (HR firm) sort me out via LinkedIn as a 'C Programmer'. His Client company was paying up to $140K and it turned out they were after 4 such experienced programmers for a large conversion of two systems, via a merger of two large companies. They got my interest at a number of levels, one of which was that I'd gone back to doing a significant C project myself in the months before (after programming mainly in Java for years - I've done very substantial systems in C and C++ over 3 decades, and even taught the C language to companies and colleges (e.g. teach-the-teacher) back in the early 1990s when it was a newer language).

After the initial Interview with the HR firm I was required to do an IKM online test for ANSI C89 / C99. Here's my result summary of that adhoc test:

The HR guy came back quickly, impressed enough to tell me that my 88% (which would be a H1 at university) was the highest score by some margin of all the applicants, and that he was instructed by the client company to shortlist for interview, all those candidates who achieved 60% or higher. That transpired to 6 candidates for 4 position. He couldn't see how I wouldn't get an offer - "though it may or may not be a little less than the $140K".

My interview with the HR firms Client was the following week. I'm no spring chicken, but I was certainly not going to start dying my hair for an interview where one's skill-set was the first-and-foremost the requirement, and where they had used an International testing agency of considerable reputation to measure that, and my team-player skills were also high, and valued during my considerable employment record.

I arrived at the Client's site about 12 minutes early for a 3pm interview. Between the reception desk and a meeting room there was an open C-shaped lounge-chaired area (pardon the pun) with a coffee-table of newspapers and a book or two, and a large TV screen on the wall with various live sporting events.

I took a seat and read a newspaper, having not layed hands on one for a year or two. About 10 minutes to go, two fellows - both between 30 and 45, perhaps, came along and went into the meeting room, to prepare for the Interview, as it transpired. They never gave me more than a fleeting glance as they rushed in to plan their questions and approach.

At 3pm they both emerged from the meeting room and looked about for the candidate, questioningly. Looking straight thru/past me, the older of the two checked his watch wandering why the candidate was now apparently late! Just as he began walking toward the Reception desk he looked back to me, as I'd now stood up moving his way with an 'excuse me . . .', and he then asked incredulously "Are you Steve?" To which I acknowledged and we all went into the Interview room and so it proceeded for the next 50 minutes or so.

They asked several standard team-player oriented questions, but mainly they asked technical questions about the C language. Of the 35 to 40 questions there were just 2 or 3 where I said something like: "No I haven't used that particular library of code for a while, so I can't tell you the specific method call and parameters I'd use off the top of my head, but I'd easily look it up in the online documentation". The rest were straight forward. They kept on searching for the allusive question that I couldn't answer at all, but it didn't come. The more senior of the two, certainly knew his C - and he would probably cherish remaining top-gun in the organisation in the C-language stakes.

The HR guy rang me the following Friday and apologetically told me the client didn't want to hire me, much to his own amazement, and that no reason was given. I said: no-matter, one gets used to these sorts of outcomes after 2 or 3 years - it was he that approached me after all - I'd long given up on seeking out such fruitless encounters and would happily get back to my own programming projects and writing endeavours. At the very least I enjoyed his conversations and the online test too - as it was a variable test, dynamically altered for the individual in its presentation and so it couldn't be fudged - which in itself was refreshing in the testing world.

There you have it: many people in IT don't think that people over 60 can even use a computer never mind program one at a very high level, never mind be an expert at it - with or without independent, international-standard testing! Despite even that I've been called upon in Court as a C-language Expert Witness, no less.

Ironically, the fact that I've programmed in C and C++ since about 1988 (i.e. 30 years), means its burned into my brain, and will probably still be clearly there the day I die.

They probably thought the younger candidates, though scoring much lower on the IKM Test, could be quickly brought up to speed. Unfortunately for the greater Client organisation itself, the C language is probably the least language that programmers can be moved across to quickly, from other, moderner, safer languages. C is very unforgiving to the uninitiated and the undisciplined. It runs counter to the modern programming paradigms and mindsets. To the unwitting Project Manager who may be used to teams working in Java or JavaScript+CSS or C# or even pure C++, throwing lightly-skilled C programmers coming from those other languages into C-proper, will blow their timelines and budgets out-of-the-water, and give their competitors a significant advantage because of the resultant delays and persistant bugs.

While I do wish the Client company good luck with their system merger, when one has age discriminatory hiring practices at the coal-face, when it comes to systems written in the C language, its going to cost you, significantly! Steve Jobs himself no less, pointed out that when it comes to system-level code (i.e. mainly written in the C language), the difference between a very good programmer and a mediocre one, is about 20+ to 1. While that ratio doesn't hold in the modern languages, purpose-built to curtail certain risks, it remains true for the C language, itself now 40 years old and only lightly enhanced. No place on earth knows this better than Silicon Valley and nearby Seattle, where most system software in the world is still written and maintained in C. It certainly seems that project managers further afield are less experienced in the peculiarities of the individual languages. . . which of course, adds to those advantages that Silicon Valley has and retains.

I looked up the HR policies on the website of the Client company in question here, and they clearly state they have Diversity in their teams: "We are proud to have teams with different backgrounds and experience. It inspires diverse thinking that in turn underpins everything we do". However, beyond those two sentences, the rest of their PR Diversity blurb is just about gender diversity. From that and my own experience, any concept of age diversity is far from their thinking or concern.

While age discrimination is wide-spread, it is particularly acute in the IT field. Companies are bringing in new younger IT programmers/analysts on work visas, claiming they can't find the numbers with the skills needed, already here. From my own experiences like this incidence here, that is often bullshit, simply because they don't even consider most people the other side of 50, or even the other side of 45, or else they only want to pay new graduate-level wages or less.

Age discrimination is hard to prove, and when someone like me chooses to raise attention to examples of it, a typical response/thought is likely: 'proves the point why you wouldn't employ such a whinging old/middle-aged privileged white guy, not used to knock-backs, who probably has a house and no mortgage to pay, with kids who have flown the nest' - all assumptions of convenience and often false, which shouldn't even enter into the 'on merit' (i.e. see test above) argument in the first place.

And yes, contrary to the usual retort about older workers, like many, I continually update my skills: Programming for me is a pleasure not simply a tool of my vocation - I've always kept my hand in it even when not programming fulltime - i.e. when project managing, researching or lecturing in other things. As well as being a long-time expert in the languages C, C++ and Java, I'm not bad at JavaScript and I'm simply loving the new Swift language from Apple, which I've chosen to learn most recently.

Steve Goschnick (gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org)

Second Call for Papers: Special Issue on Coding with the Raspberry Pi

International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP)

Special Issue on Coding with the Raspberry Pi

31 Aug 2017

Guest Editors

Steve Goschnick & (Guest Editor) Christine Sun

Introduction

The unassuming Raspberry Pi, an inexpensive credit-card sized computer, was awarded the UK's highest engineering accolade last month - the Royal Academy of Engineering's MacRobert Prize (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40444356 ). It has clocked up over 14 million sales since launch in 2012, making it the third best selling general purpose computer of all time. The Raspberry Pi Foundation, a non-profit, designed the small but versatile marvel with the joint aims of teaching Computer Science to a new generation of students, whilst also servicing a growing cohort of startups and digital makers in prototyping their heavily divergent technical dreams.

The latest version (Model 3, with integrated WiFi and Bluetooth), launched in early 2016, is their biggest seller so far, perhaps following a pattern of Version 3 maturity touching the spot (e.g. Windows V3; iMac). There have been several public ponderings since then as to whether the Raspberry Pi has become disruptive (e.g. OReilly Podcast). Two of the largest players in the industry, Microsoft and Google, have launched respective IoT (Internet of Things) products that target it in recent times, namely: the Windows10 IoT Core and the Android Things (Google's IoT platform). That makes it plain and simple: the Raspberry PI has become disruptive in the IoT space, at the very least - nothing less warrants that sort of high-profile attention from across the pond.

Recommended Topics

Our interest in the Pi for this Special Issue is in the other main part of the original goal: how has the Raspberry Pi been travelling with regard to teaching and related research, in particular with respect to bringing programming to a new and more diverse generation. We are seeking papers around coding on the Raspberry Pi, including but not limited to the following topics and questions:

• Usage of Python, Scratch, BlueJ, Greenfoot, the Wolfram Language or other programming languages and environments, in introducing young students to coding.
• Innovative use of project-based learning that utilise the GPIO and other interfaces to the wider world, that broaden the usefulness of coding to a larger percentage of students.
• How well have novices to coding been facilitated by the Raspberry Pi (and the related community) thus far?
• To a new generation whose first (and perhaps main) contact with a computer is a smartphone and/or tablet, has the Raspberry Pi helped close the conceptual gap between the thin black-box beneath the gorilla glass, and how one constructs and programs a personal computer?
• Has the novice coder market become secondary to a runaway cohort of digital makers and startups stepping up demand for the Raspberry Pi, taking it from prototyping tool to production tool?
• When and why does a coder become a maker or a student become an entrepreneur?
• Has the Raspberry Pi helped to take an appreciation of coding beyond Computer Science, into other areas of the school curriculum – Music, Science, the Arts?
• University experience with digital innovation spaces associated/hosting Raspberry JAMs.
• Library experiences with makerspaces and the Raspberry Pi.
• Raspberry Pi and Robotics.
• Is early training on the Raspberry Pi in school leading to a rush of enrolments of undergraduates that will fill gaps in ICT employment?
• Experiences with CodeDojos using the Raspberry Pi. (n.b. the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the CodeDoJo Foundation joined forces recently)
• Any research, case study or teaching topic related to programming and the Raspberry Pi.

Some readings

1. Website: Raspberry Pi - Teach, Learn and Make with the Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi Foundation (2017), https://www.raspberrypi.org
2. Podcast: The Raspberry Pi 3: Is it good enough? The Raspberry Pi is starting to look disruptive (2016), https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-raspberry-pi-3-is-it-good-enough?imm_mid=0e1bd2&cmp=em-iot-na-na-newsltr_20160317
3. Article: Google launches first developer preview of Android Things, its new IoT platform (2016), https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/13/google-launches-developer-preview-of-android-things-its-new-iot-platform/
4. Article: How to Install Windows 10 IoT Core on the Raspberry Pi 3. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-install-windows-10-iot-raspberry-pi-3
5. Article: The Raspberry Pi and CoderDojo join Forces (2017), May, 26th. https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-and-coderdojo-join-forces/
6. Posts: Wolfram Language and Mathematica for the Raspberry Pi. Accessed 2017, May, 31st. http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/?source=nav

Submission Procedure

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit papers for this special issue on Coding with the Raspberry Pi on or before 31st August 2017. All submissions must be original and may not be under review by another publication. INTERESTED AUTHORS SHOULD CONSULT THE JOURNAL'S GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS at http://www.igi-global.com/publish/contributor-resources/before-you-write/. All submitted papers will be reviewed on a double-blind, peer review basis. Papers must follow APA style for reference citations.

All submissions and inquiries should be directed to the attention of:

Steve Goschnick & Dr Christine Sun

Editor and Guest Editor

International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP)

E-mail: sgoschnick@swin.edu.au

The Rise of the Fit Bit Kids

Thu, 8 Sep 2016 01:05:06 +1000

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

(Note: this article was published first on TheConversation.com )

The rise of the fit bit kids: a good move or a step too far?

The concept of tracking your fitness with wearable technology is not new but the rate at which activity trackers are being worn by school children, is. And it's causing quite a range of reactions.

In the UK, a mother withdrew her child from primary school because it stopped him from wearing his electronic fitness bracelet, although following protests the school later allowed pupils to wear Fitbits (except during physical education class).

In New Zealand, high school counsellors said they were concerned the Fitbit devices could become a fixation, particularly with girls trying to lose weight and keep fit.

In Australia, students in some schools are wearing these devices (for example, nine of the 24 in my daughter's grade 4 class) despite terms-of-service such as Fitbit's saying users should be aged over 13 to use its service.

As for older students, Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma said earlier this year it was giving new students the option of wearing of a Fitbit as part of its ongoing fitness program. However, this caused some concern and sparked an online petition over fears it could promote eating disorders.

What gets children moving?

You only have to witness the magnetic attraction between kids and their small screens to realise why the modern parent is looking for an antidote to the exercise aversion of their offspring.

There's no doubt most kids thrive on structure put around their lives, such as enforcing some screen-time limits. The introduction of self-governance for kids at home is generally one of gradual steps and missteps.

An attractive feature of activity-trackers is that they come with an app that children are able to locate and install at kid-speed.

Your average self-tracking device does daily tallies for: steps-taken, kilometres-covered, calories-consumed and so on.

Parents will be happy to see children push up their daily step-count, and watch their young charges spending more time perusing exercise metrics and rewards, over first-person shooters and the demolition of rival buildings in Minecraft.

One reassuring aspect of the Fitbit daily dashboard, from the point of view of parents with slovenly kids in the home-zone, is that primary school kids are generally clocking-up lots of activity during their school day.

Self improvement

Researchers in pervasive computing see self-tracking as a significant tool in behavioural change in optimising one's self. From a sociology perspective, self-tracking is seen as heavily correlated with selfhood and identity.

These devices collect new information about one's self, capturing raw data that was previously hard-won or totally unavailable, and then present it visually for reflection, all with little-to-no effort by the individual. In doing so they offer a new source of rich knowledge about oneself.

Australian research into the phenomenon of self-tracking points to a philosophical grounding offered by French philosopher Michel Foucault. That individuals have a moral and ethical imperative to take up practices that help them achieve happiness, healthiness and wisdom. Practises that nourish both body and soul.

But despite the emphasis on self in this whole new scheme of smart things, the information being collected by these devices is also held by corporate entities beyond the individual.

Employers, with a vested interest in their employees' health and well-being, are also getting enthusiastic about these fitness devices.

In September 2015, the US retail giant Target offered more than 300,000 free Fitbit Zip devices to improve the wellness of employees, and the corporate image.

Some health insurance companies in the US and elsewhere, are now offering savings for people that wear such devices.

Any concerns?

So, what is the range of the growing concerns being raised about these self-tracking devices?

The computer scientist Jaron Lanier, author of Who Owns the Future?, was strapping technology onto his body back in the 1980s and has a good overarching measure of the dangers inherent in self-tracking:

There are two dangers: one is compromising privacy and the other is (that) participants can narrow themselves. Extreme adherents hyperconcentrate on certain kinds of numbers about themselves, and it can make them a little more robotic than other people.

Nonetheless, he missed the problem of low-grade devices. Fastfood giant McDonalds recently issued STEP-iT Activity Bands with Happy Meals in the US with 33 million Chinese-made wristbands set to go, only to recall them this month when burns and skin irritations were reported.

A growing concern is that self-tracking is becoming self-surveillance. And yet, in the public health domain self-tracking technologies dovetail nicely with the emphasis on self-management, on moving some personal responsibility and control back to individuals who require care.

It largely comes down to who has access to the data, what they use it for, and whether they have appropriate permission to do so.

Still, if it gets children off the couch and doing more exercise in the real world, by the time they are fit and healthy young adults they may well have cast off the activity tracking bracelet.

Or it just may evolve into a permanent augmentation, facilitating an optimised human life, from cradle to grave.

Steve Goschnick, Adjunct Professor, Swinburne University of Technology

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

App Review: ScratchJr (Scratch Junior) for both iPad and Android

Fri, 12 Aug 2016 11:09:15 +1000

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

My app review of Scratch Junior got published in the International Journal of People-Oriented Programming, 4(1), pages 50-55.

As a simple 'app review' I'm quite surprised the publisher put it behind a paywall, and so I've put a copy here on my Blog site where it can be freely accessed (with the journal publisher's permission).

Its linked here as a .pdf file for your convenience: http://www.DigitalFriend.org/document/ScratchJr-AppReview-IJPOP4(1)pp50-55.pdf

I highly recommend it if you are thinking of getting a 7 to 9 year old into Coding - its very suitable for that purpose.

Enjoy, Steve

Call For Papers: Kids and Other Novices Learning to Code

Mon, 4 Jan 2016 01:10:05 +1000

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

*************************** CALL FOR PAPERS ***************************

2nd CFP: Kids and Other Novices Learning to Code: Insights, Tools & Lessons from the Visual Programming Frontline

Special Issue of: International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP)

ISSN: 2156-1796, EISSN: 2156-1788

Editors: Leon Sterling & Steve Goschnick

Submission Due Date (extended): January 31, 2016

We are interested to hear of your research and experience with using and/or providing languages and programming environments designed to take whole new cohorts of people into Coding. Of interest is the whole span: 8 and 9 year-old school kids and younger, through to life-long learners who never thought about programming as a realistic option for themselves.

The well-known options include: Scratch, Alice, Greenfoot, AgentSheets, FLIP and various derivatives of Scratch (e.g. Snap!/BYOB, App Inventor, Blockly, FlashBlocks), derivatives of Blockly (e.g. Code.org, WonderWorkshop, Blockly Games, etc.), and various other approaches, including executable flowchart environments (e.g. LARP).

• Are colored block-based languages more effective than other approaches?
• What are the lesser known but effective language and environment options?
• Which features of current languages and environments help the student and which ones hinder them?
• Are environments that allow online collaboration and sharing with fellow learners from afar, better or not than collaboration with peers in the immediate classroom?
• Are teams, even in pairs, effective or disruptive to getting all learners to understand coding concepts?
• What data can be harvested from the coding environment, and how can it be used as feedback: to identify students facing conceptual difficulties, to improve coding exercises, and mentoring?
• Is learning to code enhanced when done in conjunction with robotics?
• How motivational is it to have a coding environment for apps that can be distributed to a large audience? E.g. App Inventor for Android.
• Is the quest to transition the new coder from a blocks-based language, to a conventional script language (e.g. Python, JavaScript) - all within the coding environment and the lessons - useful in teaching all potential learners, or simply a filter to identify future programming talent?
• When and how it useful to introduce other skills into a team project (e.g. art and design of graphic and video content), allowing individual students to build on existing strengths and weaknesses?
• How can the current crop of code learning environments and languages, be improved upon?

We are interested in submissions from educators, facilitators and researchers with experience in the new coding environments, that delve into any of the above topics, and others that are closely related.

Some Readings:

Article: Want your kids to learn another language? Teach them code. The Conversation (2015), https://theconversation.com/want-your-kids-to-learn-another-language-teach-them-code-47409 ... and repeated Below, on this page.

Article: Five reasons to teach robotics in schools. The Conversation (2015), https://theconversation.com/five-reasons-to-teach-robotics-in-schools-49357

Article: An education for the 21st century means teaching coding in schools. The Conversation (2015), https://theconversation.com/an-education-for-the-21st-century-means-teaching-coding-in-schools-42046

Article: It's back to school for Facebook, and it's personal (a personalised learning environment). The Conversation (2015), https://theconversation.com/its-back-to-school-for-facebook-and-its-personal-49804

Journal paper: Judith Good (2011). Learners at the Wheel: Novice Programming Environments Come of Age. International Journal of People-Oriented Programming, 1(1), pp.1-24 (Via http://www.igi-global.com/article/learners-wheel-novice-programming-environments/53807 )

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit papers for this special issue on or before 31st January 2016.

All submissions must be original and may not be under review by another publication. INTERESTED AUTHORS SHOULD CONSULT THE JOURNAL'S GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS at http://www.igi-global.com/journals/guidelines-for- submission.aspx. All submitted papers will be reviewed on a double-blind, peer review basis. Papers must follow APA style for reference citations. This journal is an official publication of the Information Resources Management Association www.igi-global.com/IJPOP

PUBLISHER: The International Journal of People-Oriented Programming is published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the "Information Science Reference" (formerly Idea Group Reference), "Medical Information Science Reference", "Business Science Reference", and "Engineering Science Reference" imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com.

Editors-in-Chief: Steve Goschnick & Leon Sterling (sgoschnick@swin.edu.au | lsterling@swin.edu.au)

Published: Semi-annual (both in Print and Electronic form)

All enquiries and for this Issue should be directed to the attention of: Prof. Leon Sterling, Co-Editor-in-Chief International Journal of People-Oriented Programming E-mail: lsterling@swin.edu.au

All manuscript submissions to the issue should be sent through the online submission system: http://www.igi-global.com/authorseditors/titlesubmission/newproject.aspx

**********************************************************************

Teach Kids to Code

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 22:10:05 +1000

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

(Published first in TheConversation - see link at bottom of page)

(Published first in TheConversation - see link at bottom of page)

Want your kids to learn another language? Teach them code

Among Malcolm Turnbull's first words as the newly elected leader of the Liberal Party, and hence heading for the Prime Minister's job, were: "The Australia of the future has to be a nation that is agile, that is innovative, that is creative."

And near the heart of the matter is the code literacy movement. This is a movement to introduce all school children to the concepts of coding computers, starting in primary school.

One full year after the computing curriculum was introduced by the UK government, a survey there found that six out of ten parents want their kids to learn a computer language instead of French.

The language of code

The language comparison is interesting because computer languages are first and foremost, languages. They are analogous to the written versions of human languages but simpler, requiring expressions without ambiguity.

They have a defining grammar. They come with equivalent dictionaries of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs; with prepositions and phrase patterns, conjunctions, conditionals and clauses. Of course the dictionaries are less extensive than those of human languages, but the pattern rendering nature of the grammars have much the same purpose.

Kids that code gain a good appreciation of computational thinking and logical thought, that helps them develop good critical thinking skills. I've sometimes heard the term "language lawyer" used as a euphemism for a pedantic programmer. Code literacy is good for their life skills kit, never mind their career prospects.

Scratch is one of a new generation of block programming languages aimed at teaching novices and kids as young as eight or nine to write code.

The Scratch language uses coloured blocks to represent the set of language constructs in its grammar. A novice programmer can build up a new program by dragging-and-dropping from a palette of these blocks onto a blank canvas or workspace.

The individual shapes of the blocks are puzzle-like, such that only certain pieces can interlock. This visually enforces the grammar, allowing the coder to concentrate on the creativeness of their whole program.

The Scratch language (and its derivatives) are embedded in a number of different tools and websites, each dedicated to a particular niche of novice programmers. The code.org website is a prime example and has a series of exercises using the block language to teach the fundamentals of computer science.

Code.org is a non-profit used by 6 million students, 43% of whom are female. It runs the Hour of Code events each year, a global effort to get novices to try to do at least an hour of code.

For a week in May this year, Microsoft Australia partnered with Code.org to run the #WeSpeakCode event, teaching coding to more than 7,000 young Australians. My local primary school in Belgrave South in Victoria is using Code.org successfully with grade 5 and 6 students.

Unlike prose in a human language, computer programs are most often interactive. In the screenshot of the Scratch example (above) it has graphics from the popular Plants vs Zombies game, one that most kids have already played. They get to program some basic mechanics of what looks a little like the game.

But code.org has a 'Show Code' button that reveals the JavaScript code generated behind the coloured blocks (see above). This shows novices what they created in tiles, translated into the formal syntax of a programming language widely used in industry.

It's not all about the ICT industry

Both parents and politicians with an eye to the future see the best jobs as the creative ones. Digging up rocks, importing, consuming and servicing is not all that should be done in a forward-thinking nation.

But teaching kids to code is not all about careers in computer programming, science and software engineering. Introducing young minds to the process of instructing a computer allows them to go from "I swiped this" to "I made this". From watching YouTube stars, to showing schoolyard peers how they made their pet cat photo meow.

It opens up young minds to the creative aspects of programming. Not only widening the possible cohort who may well study computer science or some other information and communications technology (ICT) professions, but also in design and the creative arts, and other fields of endeavour yet to transpire or be disrupted.

For most kids, teaching them to code is about opening their mind to a means to an end, not necessarily the end in itself.

Steve Goschnick, Adjunct Professor, Swinburne University of Technology

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.