This weekend, I travelled with Evan of OpenSprints.org and JonP to Art and Code. The experience, overall, was fantastic. We had an opportunity to sit through two classes with the venerable _why of such internet fame.
Why’s online persona completely matches his in-person persona. It was incredibly refreshing to walk into a class at 10AM on a Saturday and have it begin to the sound of an autoharp, listening with people from the age of eight and up. Installing and using HacketyHack was a breeze, of course.

Shoes, the liquified horse that powers HacketyHack, has brought complete joy to my hacking experience and allowed Evan and I to crank out what used to be multi-month learning curves of graphical kits, to a multi-hour hacking session. _why certainly solved the problem of graphical toolkits, fulfilling all of the points of The Little Coder’s Predicament.
Art and Code itself was an interesting crowd compared to most programming events. It avoids the hoo-ha, boasts a $25 entry fee, and allows all sorts of people to enjoy it, as I said above, people from the age of 8 to 60, male and female, artist and programmer.
The best part of the conference was the tiny crowd. It was to talk to an excellent group of people who seem to understand that programming is hacking, and hacking is art.
Many “enterprise” software engineers will argue you to no end about how you are doing it wrong. How do they know what I am doing, anyway?
Here’s an example:

This gives you, of course:

Ok, maybe this isn’t simple enough for a child, but it’s certainly something that could be achieved within a week or two. We’re not talking shopping carts and Flash here, we’re talking everything from Commodore to Processing as possible.
Meanwhile, you should be awaiting the release of Hackety Hack and the next Shoes. It brings out the kid in you. The kid that powers the hacker, who will make a singing game of bears dancing and attacking you, helicopters that shoot down dinosaurs, or talking to aliens that are trying to kidnap all of the good meatloafs. HacketyHack is a tool for hacks, in the most beautiful and exciting sense.
I want to go into some of the awesome features of Hackety Hack this week, right there on your laptop on your lap.
Also, check out some of the photos at my flickr set, as well as Jon’s flickr. These are really more for us, but hopefully it will inspire more to seek Potatchos.