Learning about what my husband does.

I had an awesome evening with Jono! We walked to the Indian restaurant downtown, ate food, walked back, and had a very long and interesting conversation about the Secrets of Programming!

I was complaining about the fact that, even though I understand the basic logic of programming languages (for loops, function calls, etc), I have no clue how these programming languages talk and relate to each other, and how to read/parse API documentation. The things that I want to do on the internet require me to understand databases and things that aren't just confined to a specific webpage. So Jono explained how a server works and all of the different components that go into things like "databases" and "web servers" and "ajax".

I learned that web programmers don't actually spend the majority of their time writing code -- instead they are searching for suitable libraries and reading out-dated API documentation and reading other people's code to find the nugget that they need. Jono illustrated a recent endeavor: when he wanted to get his blog updates to automatically post to twitter, he first had to read the twitter API page, which then told him he needed to use oauth, which he then had to figure out what was involved, but then it was really complicated, so then he poked around on the internet until he found a python library that handled the oauth thing. Then he had to figure out how to get some secret key stuff from twitter by pretending his website is a "twitter application"... etc etc. Basically a lot of running around and poking at various websites and languages and schema in order to generate probably 3 lines of code. So in fact his work in making the computer do his bidding involved a lot more searching and interpreting and a lot less actual writing of code. Go figure!

Other things that I've learned in conversing with Jono about programming:
- "Documentation" means "explanation for the code"
- "Server" and "database" mean things that are a VERY SPECIFIC part of what lay people generally consider "server" (some place that's not my computer where internet things are stored) and "database" (a giant spreadsheet of data that is accessible)
- "installing" a "library" means finding a collection of computer functions that are written by someone else and adding it to a folder/place so that you can use those functions in your own code.
- SQL is basically a way of giving search and insert commands to databases.

Teeth and brushing

So I went to the dentist recently, and she told me I didn't have new cavities! This is a really exciting moment for me because it used to be that I'd get at least a couple new cavities every year. I've always had bad teeth since I was a kid -- seeing frowny dentists is pretty standard for me. I have an average of 2 fillings per tooth. And over the years, I've pretty much just resigned myself to having crappy teeth that have lots of "texture" that the gunk sticks to.... Until my epiphany about a year or two ago that: I've been brushing my teeth wrong!

Now, when I was little, my parents taught me how to brush me teeth -- the proper forms and ways to direct the toothbrush. There were also various dentists who showed me when I was young. By the time I was a teenager, most dentists would just ask "how often do you brush?" and I'd say "twice a day" and they'd just go back to frowning at my teeth again. I also tried lots of different brushes -- big, small, hard, soft, electrical, etc. None of them worked especially well. I was pretty sure that I knew HOW to brush, so I figured that brushing was just pretty useless for my teeth.

It turns out, however, that what I DIDN'T know, was HOW LONG to brush. Yup. No one ever told me that you're supposed to brush your teeth for at least 2 minutes. WOW!! In my past 20 years of "brushing" I would just go through the motions and make sure each tooth has touched the brush, once or maybe twice. D: So now instead of brushing more times, I brush for a longer time, and my teeth have been getting fewer cavities!

What's also interesting, is that it turns out that my parents didn't know about the 2-minute thing, either. So it's made me think -- how do you learn these basics of brushing if you didn't have family modelling it when you were a kid? When I learned brushing from my parents, they spent a lot more time teaching and modelling how to fill up my cup with water and how to rinse my toothbrush with the water in the cup. Jono recently observed that this is a strategy that is very useful in a place where water faucets are limited/communal. So the primary thing that I learned about brushing as a child was how to manage water resources and not actually how to increase teeth cleanliness. So, this has made me think: If you are introducing modern teeth-brushing to a new culture, how do you do it? What are the basic expectations of societal competence and how do immigrants and immigrant children learn them?