musc@> $daniele.rant | Out-Blog

It was since the old times of LOGO that I did not see an effort to bring kids closer to computer programming. This is what makes Phrogram (previously called KPL – kids' Programming Language) unique today. On the KPL site you can also read that "KPL isn't just for kids any more". This means it has evolved and it is now as complete as a programming language as one of the many other you can choose among to create your full-blown applications and games.

Anyhow, this means that people might choose it because it is easy and straightforward to build up complex programs (especially games), but it also still primarly is a very attractive tool to teach the youngest generations how does programming work.

I learned the very basics of programming… in BASIC ,in fact, on my first Commodore64. What does a kid try to do ? Write a game. I also did. It was painful back then when you had to use instructions such as PEEK and POKE to "draw" the bitmaps making up your sprites and let them move by moving those bits around… at the elementary school it wasn't exactly crystal clear to me why did it work, and how. I actually had my issues with much simpler stuff, like figuring out what on earth a multi-dimensional array was, and stuff like that. LOGO simplified all of that, as you finally could just draw on your computer by moving the Turte simply asking her to move back, forward, right, left, and so on…

Of course twenty years have passed, CPU capacity has massively improved, object oriented programming has become mainstream….. so that now, with KPL/Phrogram you can write a real Arcade videogame that uses DirectX 3D graphics with just a bunch of lines of code! This absolutely ROCKS!

Yesterday I was talking to someone and he asked me if I ever look at the mirror, if I do see a different person sometimes or would like to be one; they wondered if there was anything that I would change: "do you ever wonder what it would have been if you were born as another person, or more in general – what would you change if you could?".

I did not know what to answer.

At first, I thought it would have been very unpolite to say "no, not really, not since I was 16 years old, more or less…". Well actually that's what I was thinking, tough. Maybe he'll read this. Who cares. I don't feel like I need to make everybody happy anytime, anyway. Who are they after all ? What are they trying to sell ? I don't need to buy things because this society wants to make you think you need them. I don't need to be thinner, fatter, taller, blonder, I don't need an iPod, I don't need a TomTom, I don't need all of the crap this society pushes you to think as being necessary.

That is why I am posting this picture. I was angry back then when it was taken, I was wanting to be someone else like most teenagers who haven't found themselves yet.

What would I change of myself now ?
Nothing, not really. If something has changed, is that I DO like myself these days.

Sure, it would certainly help having more money. We could have a house of our own. Currently we live with my one and only wage – me, my wife, two kids and two cats – and half of this salary goes away in paying the rental of the house – so it's not exactly easy to get on; but that is just material things. We are healty, we are happy. I've even stopped feeling miserable and sorry for myself like a lot of people do. When sometimes I feel weaker and I realize that I might start getting caught in the consumistic trap (nobody's perfect) – which happens when I feel sorry and unfortunate….
to get out of it I usually read something about people in the real poor countries, people at war, people who don't have to eat, and I think what have we done to them to sustain our richness. Then I don't feel sorry for myself. I feel sorry for them, I feel thankful for what I do have. I feel like I should be doing something for them rather than for myself. I there was anything I would change is to have the courage to need even less. Because it is among the poor people, the less fortunate that you mostly discover humanity.
Rich people tend to complain, they forget to be thankful for their situation, they always want to have more.
Sure that if "successful" people, people who think of themselves as being very important, people who make a lot of money and are enterpreneurs, if those people still think they want to change something, if they get excited by stuff like "second life", if they get shaken by looking at themselves in the mirror and they expect you to be like them… if all of these things I have seen are true, then well, then my answer is NO and NO – sincerely I don't want to change anything in my life in the way they mean. There is no project for any killer application or business that I would borrow money for, there is no dotCom follow-up I would be getting rich for.

Probably for this reason, I do LIKE looking at myself in the mirror.
I even laugh like a kid making funny faces at myself, and that is all about.
I don't have to be afraid of my shadow.