Poet Ponders the Digital

Late last night I installed the update to Apple's OS X programming tool suite, Xcode 4. This summer, in my "free" time I intend to work my way through my old copy of Teach Yourself C and the several Objective-C books I own. While I do play with various languages and tools, from AppleScript to PHP, I've never managed to master Objective-C — which is something I want to do. As I've written several times, knowing simple coding techniques is a practical skill and one that helps learn problem solving strategies. Even my use of AppleScript and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) on a regular basis helps remind me to tackle problems in distinct steps, with clear objectives from step to step. There are many free programming tools that students should be encouraged to try. On OS X, the first two tools I suggest to non-technical students are Automator and AppleScript. These tools allow you to automate tasks on OS X, similar to the batch files of DOS or the macros of Wor...

Most writers develop patterns in their prose. Experts can use these patterns to calculate the likelihood that a given text was written by a particular author. For example, my weaknesses include "unfortunately" and "just." President Obama overuses the phrase, "Let me be clear." Does the president need our permission to be clear? I doubt anyone tries to obstruct presidential clarity. Since buying my first copy of WordPerfect for DOS, I've maintained macros to help locate and remove my personal textual demons. The idea is simple: automatically highlight the words and phrases I might want to revise before submitting the text to an editor. Four years ago, a student noticed the red words in an open Word document on my laptop. She asked if the highlighting was part of Word's grammar or spellcheck features. I explained to her that when I finish writing a document I run several macros to mark potential problems. When the student asked for a copy of the...