About This Template
The inspiration behind this website is a talk from blinry that went over his blog post, Fifty Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio 📻. He previously created Making fifty TIC-80 carts in a weekend and thought the project was fun to revisit. He was inspired by Vi Hart’s Fifty Fizzbuzzes.
An Extreme Programming Exercise by Vi Hart
One of the many things I learned from Evelyn Eastmond in my time working with her is this technique for deeply exploring, releasing yourself from preconceptions, thinking in new ways.
You make 50 of something. In one big marathon. (Maybe spaced over a few days, but it’s important to exhaust your possibilities to break and illuminate habits, rather than making habits as with making a thing a week.)
50 is a LOT, and it takes you on this weird journey of ups and downs and complexifying and simplifying and combining and taking apart. It can be oddly emotional and intense.
This technique was meant for artists, but my research group has used it for VR stuff and programming language design too. So now to learn python, over the weekend I made 50 implementations of fizzbuzz.
Fizzbuzz is a classic simple programming exercise and common interview question based on a classic kids game, where you take turns counting, but if the number is divisible by 3 you say “fizz”, and if it’s divisible for 5 you say “buzz”, and if it’s divisible by both you say “fizzbuzz”.
Needless to say, to make 50 different solutions to “FizzBuzz” means getting really creating. As an example, solution 48 is a text adventure game!
Of course, it isn’t only 50 programming exercises. You can apply this elsewhere.
- 50 small knitting projects
- 50 Things to Tweet
- 50 recipes to take a crack at.
The possibilities are endless.
Why a single-purpose website?
Simon Willison wrote a blog post earlier this year that helps frame this website. Give people something to link to so they can talk about your features and ideas. I couldn’t agree more.