parlor game: let's talk about...

This parlor game comes via talvinamarich:

Comment to this post and I will pick seven things I would like you to talk about. They might make sense or be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

He gave me: Lisp, On the Mark, Accessibility, Books, Role-Playing Games, Filk, Faroe Islands (one of these things is not like the others).

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how LISP changed my professional life

Part of this meme:

LISP

The most valuable part of my education as a technical writer was my student internship with the Common LISP project. It was also either the first- or second-most important part of my education as a software developer. Yes yes, the classroom stuff was important and the software-engineering project course was essential for putting the pieces together, but this was the real world and the real world is far less tidy than the classroom.

I was brought on to help write the documentation for this then-in-development language. (Other varieties of LISP existed; this was an attempt to unify them.) But unlike all previous tech-writing work, this was for a thing that did not fully exist yet, and I was part of the ongoing design process. I was there in the (virtual) room with the lead designers, Guy Steele, Dave Moon and dozens of others big and small, and if my contributions had merit it didn't matter that I was an undergraduate with no real experience. On the ARPAnet nobody knows you're a dog undergrad. Mind, being an undergraduate with no real experience, I didn't necessarily have a lot of design ideas to contribute, but even then I was pretty good at catching inconsistencies and asking key questions. I learned to write software-interface documentation there, but even more importantly I learned to be part of a real software-development process, to ask questions even if they might seem "stupid", to argue for technical positions and support those arguments, and to be a full member of a team.

When I graduated and met more of the real world I would learn that it usually doesn't work like this. In a lot of places, tech writers are not part of the development process (and may not even be in the development department) and the attitude is that they can come in after the big boys are done developing the product. Phooey on that; this important early experience taught me that it doesn't have to be that way, and I have held firm on this in every place I've ever worked. If I hadn't had this early lesson, I might well have fled the field.

It is also because of the Common LISP project that I went into programmer documentation (and expanded from there). I wouldn't have pursued tech-writing jobs that were all about walking the menus in the UI and stepping through wizards and such; I want to look under the hood, understand what's there, and use that knowledge to help users. Building software development kits like I do now is exciting and nourishes my inner geek. When I went to college I hadn't even heard of technical writing (I went there to do computer science), but I came out as a technically-proficient writer who knows the good that is possible. I have Common LISP to thank for that.

On the Mark: origins

Part of this meme:

On the Mark:

So it's like this. I enjoy making music, both singing and playing, and while the SCA was providing opportunities to do that, it couldn't scratch the folk-music part of that itch. Filksings at SF cons, while also enjoyable, couldn't scratch much of the itch either; I don't play guitar and I don't write my own songs, so I felt like my offerings there amounted to "reasonably-well-done a-capella songs we've all heard before". But there was this group playing at cons called Clam Chowder that was doing the kinds of music I wanted to do -- rich arrangements, a variety of instruments, a mix of folk songs and filk and "found filk" and the occasional oddball piece. And I wondered if there was room for more of that kind of thing in fandom and perhaps occasional coffeehouses and stuff, so I asked three musical SCA friends if this sounded interesting to them, and it did, and off we went. (Because we were all in the SCA, we could easily incorporate the renaissance music we were already doing there into other performances -- bonus!)

Now this all worked pretty well when we were in our 20s and didn't have such demanding jobs and I wasn't yet paying attention to Shabbat and the only group members who were married were married to each other. We had a lot of fun for about 15 years and then shut it down on a high note. We didn't want to be one of those groups that slowly degrades while its friends sigh and hope you'll put it out of their misery, y'know?

I still listen to our CDs (well, mp3s now) sometimes and, well, gosh, we were pretty good. In my biased opinion. :-) I wish we'd done more music that we'd be free and clear to post online; I'd like to be able to share.