learn to code
I learned to code* in the 1980s, when my working class immigrant parents bought me a Commodore 64. (today we all “love” Apple products but the C64, by virtue of being affordable and thus ubiquitous, was the revolutionary computer of the 1980s.)
Like everyone my age, I learned to code from print magazines. I would hand copy scripts from computer magazines, one character at a time. I also went to the local library on Saturdays to hang out with fellow C64 enthusiasts; I remember them as very kind, very generous adults. God bless them.
By the time I was in college (the late 1900s), I was making interactive “decks” with HyperCard; branching stories that combined images, sounds, words and (tiny) videos. This was of course the beginning of the Web: every time you visit a site, you’re calling it via the HYPER TEXT transfer protocol.
I went on to make, many web sites (for fun, and to pay the rent), a CD-ROM, some feature films, an immersive audio play, and probably more than a thousand hours of shorts.
but I never stopped being the 11 year-old immigrant kid tinkering with a computer.† literally, my ability to make (commercial) art for a living has been a function of my love of computer technology; it’s one of the few domains of knowledge where I am, at least, an expert. FWIW. (turns out, not much. but knowledge is for freedom, first, profit: maybe?)
so, last week, after I ended a job that I aced, I decided to go back to the fountain of my youth and “code something.”
specifically: an app for visionOS, the experimental Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality device that Apple put out earlier this year.
(if you’ve seen the movie Brainstorm, perfect in its brokenness, you understand much of the promise of this new device: a supercomputer you strap to your eyes to savor memories.)
here is a short video I made & posted last night when I finished the first iteration of my first app.
if you have Xcode and/or Simulator on your computer (what is wrong with you?) you can download and run the most recent version.
(The zip file is called “4Adam” because it was my friend Adam L., who also suffers from the terminal “loves computers” disease, who inspired me to work with visionOS.)
we make things to learn. sometimes, we learn to make things.
in one ideal world, I would spend the rest of my life making an app that updates regularly. subscribers would get a notification, open the app and be delighted | touched | shook. (this idea circa 2019)
alas, ours is a real world.
so here is my LinkedIn if you’d like to hire endorse me.††
Anyone can learn to code in a few days.
Not everyone can make code funny and cute.
Music
This morning I had the boys listen to the difference between two beautiful songs, recorded 10 years apart. The latter is a synth pop classic: stripped down bass, steady beat, background melodies. I told the boys:
the synthetic brings the human into relief – it makes us more obviously vulnerable, fallible, romantic.
Movies
Robert Towne passed away last week and I felt it was finally time to show the boys Chinatown.
They’ve watched Wages of Fear and, recently, its equally great remake Sorcerer, as well as Hollywood Confidential, American Gangster, Serpico etc. They were ready.
They loved it, of course.
Usually, the oldest turns on me when I play him social realist movies from the 1970s, as these seldom have happy endings. (The Friends of Eddie Coyle is still a sore subject.)
But this time he simply said: “Well, that was depressing.”
Indeed! I cried at the end.
(Yes, the director did very bad things in his personal life. By my count, several hundred people worked on this movie about our moral imperative to do the best we can in a world where evil men often get away with it.)
I tend to only talk about perfect movies so it’s easy to get the impression that I’m prone to hyperbole (GUILTY AS CHARGED!) but, truly, every detail about this movie is perfect. Just perfect.
Until next time!
Thank you for allowing me into your life yet again.
I hope all is well!
take care,
Jose
Footnotes
*for a hot minute, reactionary trolls would insult journalists by telling them they should “learn to code”. while the origins of the meme are loosely described here, it’s an older story about the failure of neoliberal regimes to manage the creative destruction of industrial labor. (cf., the oldest story: where “centrists” fail, fascists thrive.)
†for that reason, much of my art has been about technology. the feature film ISA (what’s in a name?), south to the future, pepito.
††I’d appreciate an endorsement over a job, almost any day – other than 1st of the month, when the rent is due!
Postscript
Feel free to ask me what I learned while making this app! Some of it was a little surprising; e.g., Apple released a suite of tools for this field that don’t quite work. I had them pegged as the “flawless execution” company.