octojon

They/he. CS educator, curriculum writer, and recovering music teacher. Music, making, coding, TRPGs, modular synths. Roots for the Baltimore Crabs. 2 degrees in music education. Writer with Gourmelee Games.

Pronouns: They/He
Website: https://octojon.dev
Garden: https://garden.octojon.dev
GitHub: https://github.com/jonstapleton/

Last Notes

2026-02-20 20:14:00 UTC

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yepp. I just need to figure out how to convince enough people here of that such that we can collectively start addressing all the bad education baked into our system. unfortunately the "no humanity here plz" contingent is pretty well-represented in computing education these days

2026-02-20 16:34:13 UTC

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yes, we are 100% in agreement on this. The people I'm sort of strawmanning here don't seem to value the creative act, which I find totally contemptible. Arguing that their perspective is anti-human and anti-community is a sort of different set of arguments (which I also _love_ making haha).

2026-02-20 12:41:48 UTC

Okay real research question (I'm curious about y'all's thoughts)--the lowest common denominator of the genai/vibe coding debate in education is something like "regardless of how the code gets written, good computing education ensures students are able to understand and explain whatever they generate". Now that's not the end of _my_ goals an an educator, but it's the part of it I share with the vibe-coding boosters.
So then the real question is: how easy is it to learn to read & understand code by _writing it_ vs _generating_ it? If there's a transition point (e.g., student write simple programs & generate complex ones), where is that and how do we know when to make the transition? And what's the difference for classroom students vs informal, self-taught learners (this is the area that I get really animated about--LLMs are having a profound regressive effect for informal learners imo).
For coding educators, it doesn't matter how good LLMs are at generating code--our novice students will always be worse, but that's normal and fine. What matters is how it facilitates or inhibits the skill acquisition that make reading & analyzing code possible. Maybe the industry doesn't care about individual speed anymore bc genai is faster (it shouldn't ever have, imo), but I'm trying to get people to _learn to code_, not _produce software_. And I'm not convinced genai has a role to play that outstrips the pedagogy that predates it, at least not yet (and that's beside all my other objections to genai, which are numerous).

2026-01-11 18:17:59 UTC

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I'm having these feelings lately. Her philosophy against extraction and industrial progress is very useful to me these days, and I'm so grateful for her (as much as I wish she were here to help us make sense of this terrible moment)

2025-05-23 17:12:44 UTC

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totally agreed. That said, from my perspective on pedagogy, this is a great starting point for a lot of important concepts. The fact that global variables are both a) the most close-at-hand solution that's easiest to teach and learn and b) totally inadequate leads to a situation where students get to improve their engineering practices iteratively as they learn new concepts rather than having to onboard complex mental models before they get to write any code (this is what Java is so much harder to teach and learn than, e.g., Lua and Love2D).
I guess tl;dr, imo this common framework design decision has a lot of pedagogical benefits even if it doesn't really satisfy the needs of game designers and other similar programmers. It's interesting to compare this pedagogical approach to the approaches implied by other tools like uxn, forth, etc.

2025-05-20 14:35:42 UTC

Alright, the time has come for me to make some accessories that express my bottomless rage and contempt for generative AI. Anyone have an idea for a pithy, somewhat militant phrase to adorn some Luddite art? I have some ideas but concision isn't my gift lol. I'd be happy to send a hand-embroidered patch your way if I end up using your idea! (I won't be making a ton of these or anything, making stuff like this takes me a long time by hand).
I'll post art ideas below as I come up with stuff. I'm attending an AI education conference today so I'll have lots of inspiration.

2025-02-21 16:25:01 UTC

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if only my enemies approached me so brazenly! Lol

2025-02-21 02:04:36 UTC

I've managed to stave off the worst of the horrors so far but today I've found myself in a really terrible headspace. Does anyone have good reading recommendations as I define my threat model and begin making more structured & specific decisions about action in this environment?