Talk for the Analy High School AP Computer Science Class

Posted 17 May 2016

Last week I gave my third annual talk to our local high school’s programming/computer science class. The classes are taught by Analy High math teacher Walt Hays, whose website has the wonderful domain name www.dogatemyhomework.com. The AP class is new; it is based around an online course that teaches programming in Java.

For my guest talk, each year I’ve improvised the presentation, feeling around for what was of interest. This year, I gave a three-part talk:

• A brief history of computing
• Programming on the web
• Computer science as a career

Caitlin Baker from the Analy film class was kind enough to record my talk and post the video:

I really enjoy connecting a bit with the students and sharing my perspective from 40 years in the industry. I have, alas, found it frustratingly difficult to get most of them to engage by asking or responding to questions during the class.

I’ve had the opportunity to get to know two of the students a little better: Luc Street and Izzy Ehnes both joined Webvanta as interns after my talks in previous years. It’s been great to have them be part of our little company.