Jean-Francois Charles

Since June 22nd, I have been a Teaching Assistant for the course Great Ideas in Computer Science with Java at Harvard Summer School . During the first two lectures of the course, Pr. Henry Leitner introduced important concepts through programming in the Scratch environment. With Scratch, the students can focus on the notions of algorithm, conditions, loops, variables, without being overwhelmed by a complicated syntax. Scratch is very fun to use and makes it easy to embed images, sounds, and mouse- or keyboard-based interaction. Check out some examples of Scratch programs in these Galleries . At the MIT and at Harvard, you may often hear that " Anybody Can Learn To Program " (in the great book How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing , the authors push a little further: " Everybody Should Learn To Program "). With Scratch, " Everybody Can Learn To Program Fast ". Scratch and Max MSP versions of a simple interactive musical pr

Maybe you know already James Ingram, who wrote Michael Jackson's PYT with Quincy Jones. But today, I want to invite you to visit the new web site of another James Ingram , who worked during a long time as Karlheinz Stockhausen's personal engraver. James Ingram enabled Karlheinz Stockhausen to reach the quality of engraving he wanted for his scores. Have a look at some excerpts . I particularly like Michaels Reise um die Erde and Xi for basset-horn (I studied this piece several years ago - the fingerings are given for a Leblanc basset-horn, but it's easy to find ones that work for the Buffet Crampon model). Scores are published by Stockhausen Verlag . Picture by Clive Barda, 1985, retrived from this Unsichtbare Chöre review .

During this summer of 2009, I am a Teaching Assistant for the course Great Ideas in Computer Science with Java at Harvard Summer School . Java may be the most musical of all computer languages... Don't forget it's also the name of a French dance : La Java Bleue (1938): L'accordéoniste (1942):