https://bphogan.com/2017/06/Recent content in 2017/06 on Brian P. HoganHugo -- gohugo.ioen-ushttps://bphogan.com/2017/06/20/if-scratch-isnt-the-answer-i-think-i-know-what-is/Tue, 20 Jun 2017 22:01:55 +0000https://bphogan.com/2017/06/20/if-scratch-isnt-the-answer-i-think-i-know-what-is/<p>(Originally <a href="https://medium.com/@bphogan/if-scratch-isnt-the-answer-i-think-i-know-what-is-ade3bc3aafdc">posted over at Medium</a>)</p> <p>In <a href="https://medium.com/@vopi/why-we-should-teach-kids-actual-programming-not-scratch-alice-and-other-intro-languages-c8ba18befee1">this post</a>, the author, Dominic Pace, argues that we should teach “actual programming” instead of Scratch. I encourage you to read that first because it makes some great points. It’s written by a high school senior who’s hit upon something important: “Learn to code” tools like Scratch and Alice really are somewhat disconnected from software development. They do help with problem-solving, and they do help students work with the very basics of software development, but they create an unrealistic expectation of how we really build software.</p>https://bphogan.com/2017/06/20/one-year-at-digitalocean/Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:40:26 +0000https://bphogan.com/2017/06/20/one-year-at-digitalocean/Today marks one year with DigitalOcean, and I couldn&rsquo;t be happier. I&rsquo;m so unbelievably lucky to get to do what I do there. I work on the DigitalOcean Tutorials collection, where I help community authors get their articles published. It&rsquo;s the perfect job for me, as I get to draw from my software development and system administration backgrounds, as well as my writing, editing, and teaching experiences. Writing software is fun, but DigitalOcean gives me the opportunity to help others get better at what they do.