How sad it would have been, to have missed that moment, just because my world was never expanded beyond the everyday constraints of A-Z to the new, exotic letters of and. So when I read this story of a boy who has his whole world opened up past its previous boundaries, I had an instant flashback to the first time that I wrote a piece of basic HTML and refreshed my browser to see an incarnation of that code appear there as if by magic, somehow transformed from the obtuse, alchemical equation in my text editor to the beautiful (to me), clean text, images, and links that now sat before me in shining Chrome. Starting with HTML5 and CSS, I am working my way through JavaScript, and plan to finish the rest of Free Code Camp’s Full Stack Development certification.īy training, though, I am an historian and a Classicist, meaning that, though I have never directly made money with what I learned in school, I find pleasure in drawing together disparate pieces of information and seeing how they inform each other. I am in the midst of a major undertaking: learning to code from scratch, having not touched a computer in that way since I endured a QuickBasic class in middle school. I decided it was time to tell her anyway. The other day, I looked in the rear-view mirror on the way to karate and asked my almost-five-year-old daughter if she knew what I was doing on my computer when I worked at home. After all this, the Narrator leaves Conrad back at the school’s blackboard where he found him, inventing his own new letter, A-Z erased and left long behind. Seuss’ books, such as Glikker and Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs.Īs the narrator drags Conrad from imaginary land to imaginary land, he shows him the incredible beasts and contraptions that they would have missed without the letters Glikk and Floob and more. The Narrator explains that there are letters beyond “Z,” which allow one to spell the sorts of words that one finds in Dr. What On Beyond Zebra is aboutįor those of you who have not had the pleasure - or need a refresher - On Beyond Zebra relates the story of young Conrad Cornelius o’Donald o’Dell discovering a new branch of knowledge through the Narrator’s cavalier assertion that he would never be so boring as to stop at “Z” when he had reached the “end” of the alphabet. Not only will it pay dividends for decades to come, but it will help to build a healthy respect for the utility of technology and the beauty of the humanities. But in particular, make clear the parallels with what you do as a hobby, for a living, or for a passion. Discuss with them the importance of exploration. I heartily recommend the book to these people, but today, I’m recommending it to developers and technologists as well. Seuss’ On Beyond Zebra, of course, but it is clear in its message that staying locked within comfortable knowledge is a recipe for a boring and unfulfilled life.Īs a universal message, this is one for academics, scientists, writers, and everyone else whose job involves expanding their understanding of the world. Written in 1955, there is no direct mention of programming in Dr. So begins the journey of Conrad Cornelius o’Donald o’Dell into the world of code, the alphabet beyond the alphabet. My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!” I’m telling you this ‘cause you’re one of my friends. Seuss “In the places I go there are things that I see That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z. By William Cabell The Danger of Stopping at Z: Why Kids Should Code, in the Words of Dr.
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