nuclear lisp turtle woman
I’ve been looking back at some little things I remember from school.. And turtle came to mind. Specifically logo, and “tortis”?
Does anybody remember this? Logo?
I had an interesting teacher in my early teens- I was at an American private school in Brazil. We had a computer teacher by the name of Mr.Ventrillo, this guy had spent the last hundred years or so of his life stationed on a destroyer inside the arctic circle detecting a nuclear attack by the Soviets.
No kidding.
I don’t think the kids in the class (all ten of them) paid much attention to what he had explained to us he’s done before he materialized here in front of us. I don’t know that I personally showed any interest.
We had a clue- this was a private school- we had this one teacher who was unrelenting in his demands that we know the full name and title of every leader of every country in the world- this guy would make us take down a summary of world events every day. It was the ‘current events’ section. We were tested on this shit- Anyway- it was naked genius. It was entirely his decision that this was what we would learn- I think a couple of years later he was fired because some school parents were “alerted” to the fact that he was gay.
Anyhow- thanks to people like that- I was here in Mr.Ventrillo’s computer class- and I had a clue of what the hell the cold war was (it was still going at this point).
One of the things we touched upon was logo.
Yes, the turtle.
Incidentally, a program called “tortis” which may sound familiar if you’re my age group and a nerd.. Was written by Radia Perlman. Who is a woman. Who is a Jew. And… Who is one of the people you should thank for the fact that you are able to see this right now. Because she helped solve some of the problems to make internet communication possible. Yes, Radia Perlman, in her fifties, woman. Yup. Let’s pay attention here male nerd comrades. I read up a little more and it turns out when she came up with some solutions people paid no fucking attention because she was a she.
Actually I have no clue if she’s Jewish. It’s just that name.. :-)
So, LOGO. Written in fucking LISP! Yes! It makes sense now. How you would enter commands and the stuff would happen, or it would not. Line by line. I was using lisp, and didn’t even know it.
I find this notworthy because I’m a perl hacker. And from my research I find repect for c, but interest only in lisp- other than precious perl, of course.
