In praise of impractical programming

Although it's become a cul­tur­al main­stay now, I still remem­ber when I first saw that thick book — the one with the wiz­ard on the cover — about a school for magic where won­ders are eas­i­ly con­jured by those who know the prop­er spells. Of course, I'm talk­ing about the Struc­ture and Inter­pre­ta­tion of Com­put­er Pro­grams. There was that other book with the spells, but the"Wiz­ard Book" sin­cere­ly claimed to teach magic.

For the past few years, I've been work­ing as a soft­ware devel­op­er in the news­room, where per­cep­tions of my kind have changed from nov­el­ty to a neces­si­ty. Rec­og­niz­ing this, some jour­nal­ism schools now even require pro­gram­ming cours­es to teach stu­dents prac­ti­cal skills with data­bas­es or web frame­works. It's thrilling to con­tem­plate a gen­er­a­tion of web-hacking jour­nal­ists — but I wish we could some­how squeeze a lit­tle magic into their course load..........

In praise of impractical programming
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/11/in-praise-of-impractical-programming/