The last lecture by Randy Pausch Page B

chutzpah, you can attempt to do it on a grand scale, trying to enable the dreams of millions of people.
    I’d like to think that’s the story of Alice, the Carnegie Mellon software teaching tool I was lucky enough to help develop. Alice allows introductory computing students—and anyone else, young or old—to easily create animations for telling a story, playing an interactive game or making a video. It uses 3-D graphics and drag-and-drop techniques to give users a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience. Alice is offered free as a public service by Carnegie Mellon, and more than a million people have downloaded it. In the years ahead, usage is expected to soar.
    To me, Alice is infinitely scalable. It’s scalable to the point where I can picture tens of millions of kids using it to chase their dreams.
    From the time we started Alice in the early 1990s, I’ve loved that it teaches computer programming by use of the head fake. Remember the head fake? That’s when you teach somebody something by having them think they’re learning something else. So students think they’re using Alice to make movies or create video games. The head fake is that they’re actually learning how to become computer programmers.
    Walt Disney’s dream for Disney World was that it would never be finished. He wanted it to keep growing and changing forever. In the same way, I am thrilled that future versions of Alice now being developed by my colleagues will be even better than what we’ve done in the past. In upcoming iterations, people will think they’re writing movie scripts, but they’ll actually be learning the Java programming language. And, thanks to my pal Steve Seabolt at Electronic Arts, we’ve gotten the OK to use characters from the bestselling personal computer video game in history, “The Sims.” How cool is that?
    I know the project is in terrific hands. Alice’s lead designer is Dennis Cosgrove, who was a student of mine at the University of Virginia. Another former student who became a colleague is Caitlin Kelleher. She looked at “Alice” in its earliest stages and said to me, “I know this makes programming easier, but why is it fun?” I replied: “Well, I’m a compulsive male and I like to make little toy soldiers move around on my command, and that’s fun.”
    So Caitlin wondered how Alice could be made just as fun for girls, and figured storytelling was the secret to getting them interested. For her PhD dissertation, she built a system called “Storytelling Alice.”
    Now a computer science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Caitlin (oops, I mean, Dr. Kelleher) is developing new systems that revolutionize how young girls get their first programming experiences. She demonstrated that if it is presented as a storytelling activity, girls become perfectly willing to learn how to write software. In fact, they love it. It’s also worth noting that it in no way turns the boys off. Everybody loves telling stories. It’s one of the truly universal things about our species. So in my mind, Caitlin wins the All-Time Best Head-Fake Award.
    In my last lecture, I mentioned that I now have a better understanding of the story of Moses, and how he got to see the Promised Land but never got to set foot in it. I feel that way about all the successes ahead for Alice.
    I wanted my lecture to be a call to my colleagues and students to go on without me, and to know I have confidence that they will do great things. (You can keep tabs on their progress at www.alice.org.)
    Through Alice, millions of kids are going to have incredible fun while learning something hard. They’ll develop skills that could help them achieve their dreams. If I have to die, I am comforted by having Alice as a professional legacy.
    So it’s OK that I won’t set foot in the Promised Land. It’s still a wonderful sight.

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IT’S ABOUT HOW TO LIVE YOUR LIFE

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