Code, Curiosity, and the Courage to Keep Building: A Conversation with Dr. Hal Smith
About this episode
Mr. Fred interviews Dr. Hal Smith about his journey in software development and the challenges of teaching coding to the next generation.
What does it look like when someone has spent decades writing real software, then walked into a classroom to help the next generation figure it out? In this episode, Mr. Fred sits down with a longtime colleague, Dr. Hal Smith, a professor of Information Sciences and Technology, former software developer at Raytheon, and yes, a ukulele player, for one of the most honest and wide-ranging conversations the show has had yet. Dr. Hal traces his journey from a Cub Scout field trip to a power facility, where a computer playing Hangman lit a spark, to programming on a Timex Sinclair, learning Basic in a Cornell enrichment class, and eventually writing missile guidance algorithms in Tucson, Arizona. He talks about what industry taught him that no textbook could, including the time he had to debug a compiler and the time he built a globe display for a ground-based radar tracker from scratch. But this conversation goes deeper than origin stories. Mr. Fred and Dr. Hal dig into the real challenges of teaching software development today: the students who arrive expecting to build video games by week two, the disconnect between how young people experience technology and what a first-semester…
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