Well, it’s been a busy five months since I posted a newsletter. To make amends, I thought I’d make a few confessions:

• First, I’ve always liked teaching. As some of you may know, I enrolled in a Master of Arts of Teaching (MAT) graduate program in April. They said it would be “accelerated” which has proven to be no joke. It’s been a LOT of work which is a big reason why I haven’t posted anything here or offered any courses.

• Second, I’ve always liked coding. Frankly, it’s never felt like a huge burden to me much in the same way that playing notes has never felt like a burden to me as a musician. In fact, I get a big kick out of abusing computers using only the limited powers of my mind. Maybe people like having AI agents do all of the dirty work, but that's not for me--I like getting my hands dirty, making mistakes, scratching my head, and trying to make sense of everything that's going on.

• Finally, I’ve never actually worked everything in the infamous Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) book. Yes, I’ve taught a course from SICP more than 20 times, but that course has skipped a lot of examples and exercises in the interest of time. I’m such an imposter!

In light of the last confession, I've decided to offer a weird new course (minus SICP SICP), that runs for 8 Saturdays starting on Nov. 7. In short, it's a course that aims to cover all of the extended examples that got skipped in the normal SICP course. I'm also mixing things up with a new teaching format that blends synchronous and asynchronous instruction along with some unusual requirements such as the fact that you're not going to know what programming language you'll get to use until you show up on the first day. The webpage has more details, but if you're looking for a bit of coding fun, it might the ticket.

As for my prior courses, they remain on indefinite hiatus. I'm still working on my MAT degree and will be student teaching over the next six months. So, even if I wanted to run one of those courses, there's no practical way to schedule it. Will those courses return in the future? I really have no idea. However, if you remain subscribed here, I'll be sure to post announcements about future courses.

Cheers,
Dave