I thought the readings were very helpful, and were able to teach both beginners and those who have more experience. The video of how the internet works was entertaining and it made me think about how the vast majority of people view it as an “omni-present cloud” that simply exists outside of normal laws of physics. It reminded me of how many people view the media as some intractable machine bent upon feeding itself, rather than the public service many journalists are trying to provide.

Having some experience with programming, I had seen many of the “laws” given about programming in the workplace. I thought they were funny at many times, and unfortunately violated quite often in the corporate workplace (which is another viewpoint of people seeing something as a machine rather than a helpful tool). I had never thought to compare those rules to my writing as a journalist, but unconsciously I think that I did regardless. One of the hardest to follow for me is: simple is better than complex.

I like the idea of thinking like a programmer in our journalistic writing, as that is the background for much of my thinking. I am the son of two programmers, and therefore I find programming logic to be, well, logical. I want to delve into the guts of some programming languages, because I am always interested in learning something new about computers. I think that we can always make the languages more efficient and more dynamic, and that means that we should always be learning and adapting to new advances. It is also imperative, to me at least, to know where the origin of these languages and computers came from. The history of it is the basis for how we learn what mistakes we made and what to avoid in the future. I think this also applies to journalism, and writing in general. We should always be striving to write better; to report better; to investigate better. If we don’t learn as we go, we will get left behind.