PyCon Day 2: Opening Keynote, Lorena Barba

Beyond “Learning to Program” – Education Open-Source Culture and Structured Collaboration in Language

Two things I care about: Education and Science

• I’ll be talking about education, because we only really have time for that.
• NumFocus provides sponsorship to smaller open source projects that wouldn’t be able to survive on their own.

Language

• “People act through language” and I’m interested in exploring that with respect to education.
• Obama administration announced “Computer Science For All”. Half of all STEM jobs will be related to Computer Science in 2 years.
• Used to be “CP4E”: “Computer Programming for Everybody” worked on by Guido back in the mid-90s.
• The origins of the Python Software Foundation come from this program.
• 1999, “…what would the world look like if users could program their own computer?” DARPA funded CP4E proposal.
• Highlighted
  • a new programming curriculum
  • A user-friendly programming environment
  • build community (Python is a demonstration of the success of this community)
• Community -> culture -> language
  • Allows us to coordinate with each other to create value
  • More than just volunteer work
  • This culture makes it possible for people to create high-complexity projects together
  • ergo, the language and community plays a big role in education
• “… we compare mass ability to write and modify software with mass literacy…” –CP4E proposal, 1999
• 2006 Jeannette M Wing, Computational Thinking, Comm of the ACM. “It represents a universally applicable attitude and skill set everyone, not just computer scientists…
• Computational Thinking was mentioned in the book “Mindstorms” 1980.
  • This was written by Seymour Papert who designed the “turtle” which was actually a physical robot before it was the robot on the screen that we all used.
• “People act through language”
• Winograd & Flores, 1986. Language/Action perspective
• I learned about this when I was an undergrad in Valparaiso, Chile in a workshop with Fernando Flores
• Learned about “conversations for action”
  • Came to the realization that when we’re having conversations, we’re actually working
  • The converse is true: when we work, we have to be having conversations

Fernando Flores

• Fernando Flores
  • Famous invention was “Project CyberSyn, 1971”.
  • Implemented a system to manage the national economy over TELEX
  • See “Cybernetic Revolutions” book
  • See “Network World” 1994 article, Network Innovators
  • Was a political prisoner from 1973-1976 during the military coup
  • Came to the US and became a PhD student at UC Berkely in the late 70s
  • Worked with Terry Winograd, a CS professor at Stanford
    • Created “The Coordinator”
    • Sold half million copies
    • Communications of the ACM in May 2006 called the book a “groundbreaking textbook on system design”
    • Premise was that communication is for action, promises, requests, invitations, work, etc.

Conversations for Action

• Converstaions for Action
  • Published recently in 2013
  • Edited essays from the 1980s
  • Should design conversations around the network of commitments that we make to each other
  • We make explicit promises to each other
  • Promises changes the future
  • When we fail to communicate, trust diminishes
• Structure of a conversation for action
  • A makes a request or offer
  • B makes a promise or accepts
  • B declares to have delivered
  • A declares to be satisfies
  • Sometimes we forget about the final 2 steps
  • Of course, you also have to work and actually do things outside of this conversation
• Full analysis has more outcomes
  • After A makes the request, there are 5 more outcomes
  • B accepts
  • B rejects
  • B negotiates
  • A can withdraw the request
  • A can modify the terms

Open Source Collaboration

• Open source collaboration
  • In a pull request
    • contributor A wants project owner B to perform some action: pull new changes into their repo (review and merge)
    • B can decline; END
    • B can accept, and B will merge the PR -> the agreement is implicit
    • B can review, work will happen outside the conversation
    • B can counter, and a pull request discussion ensues
  • Commitment-based culture of collaboration
    • Commiter agrees to review the PR
    • GitHub Issues, project contribution policy: “Log an issue for any question or problem”
      • Implicit in that is a promise that issues will be reviewed
    • The genius of GitHub is that it has encapsulated an action based conversation in one button
    • Tool-of-the-trade in open-source world that supports the workflow and promises
• Ed FOO
  • Tim O’Reilly’s session
    • Access to knowledge-on-demand is changing work for humans
    • With facts available at your fingertips, what do we need to teach?
    • “Critical thinking”… what does it actually mean?
    • What are the foundational skills of the modern age?
    • “How about the work of Terry Winograd?”
    • Expert behaviour comes from knowing what commitments to make and how to deliver on them
    • I think that this framework has permeated the Open Source culture
• Back to CP4E
  • Develop a new curriculum
  • Better tools
  • Build a user community
  • Actively participate in the user mailing list to foster community
  • “…we design our organizations around the networks of commitments being made…” ~F. Flores
  • When people coordinate through commitments, trust grows, we strengthen community
  • “Building community” == “Building commitment”

Finally…

• Last year’s keynote by Gabriella Colman
  • Published “The ‘Con’”
  • The lasting effect of a conference are that any doubts about the individuals commitments are dispelled and the commitment is solidified
• In education: Maker -> Hacker
• Speech acts–Language rituals that build trust
  • also include offers, declarations, etc.
• Language/Action Perspective
• Online learning
  • can we have a platform as effective as GitHub for online learning?
  • Language/action perspective can help us do this
• Core values for open source
  • Culture
  • Community
  • Commitment
  • Trust/Belonging
  • Language
• If you’re an educator, move beyond the narrative of “Learning to code”. It’s more than just about coding. It’s about the language ritual that create the culture of commitment.