Fanciful Magic

Heros

I was reading an old copy of Keyboard magazine when I ran across an article on "Musical Heroes". The article made a big deal about knowing your heroes and picking them carefully. The point was to challenge the reader to create music that is inspired by your heroes, but not a mere copy. It also challenged the reader to pick unlikely heroes even if they were from different eras. So, what's my point of this post? I think we should pick "technical heroes" and not ones from our era. I could say that Alan Kay, Martin Fowler, and Paul Graham are technical heroes in the same breath that I could mention Alice Cooper,Jean Michel Jarre, Mr. Bungle, Parliament, etc as musical heroes. But, that wouldn't be the whole picture and I believe that there lots to be learned from the past. Musically, I love Esquivel which is not my generation (actually, it's my dad's) and technically the author of "Psychology of Computer Programming". Again, what's my point? Never pick heroes from just your generation. I think a lot of the old technical books hold a tons of valuable information (personnally, I was shocked to read older AI books and find the roots of OO inside, but of course that's old hat to some folks...I'm a youngun, forgive me).

Well, it's not much of a point, but I'm sticking to it...=)