Programming as a Way of Thinking

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Programming has changed. In first generation languages like FORTRAN and C, the burden was on programmers to translate high-level concepts into code. With modern programming languages—I’ll use Python as an example—we use functions, objects, modules, and libraries to extend the language, and that doesn’t just make programs better, it changes what programming is.

Programming used to be about translation: expressing ideas in natural language, working with them in math notation, then writing flowcharts and pseudocode, and finally writing a program. Translation was necessary because each language offers different capabilities. Natural language is expressive and readable, pseudocode is more precise, math notation is concise, and code is executable.

But the price of translation is that we are limited to the subset of ideas we can express effectively in each language. Some ideas that are easy to express computationally are awkward to write in math notation, and the symbolic manipulations we do in math are impossible in most programming languages.

The power of modern programming languages is that they are expressive, readable, concise, precise, and executable. That means we can eliminate middleman languages and use one language to explore, learn, teach, and think.

Figure 1

As an example, Figure 1 shows the breadth first search (BFS) algorithm expressed in the pseudocode used in a popular textbook. The authors designed this language to be more concise and readable than most programming languages at the time, which was 1989.

Figure 2 shows the same algorithm in Python. It is a few lines shorter than the pseudocode, and because it uses more words than symbols, I think it’s more readable. Also, unlike pseudocode, we can run it, display the results, and debug it.

Figure 2

Running programs is the whole point of programming, of course, but there is more to it. The ability to execute code makes programming a tool for thinking and exploring. When we express ideas as programs, we make them testable; when we debug programs, we are also debugging our brains.

Languages like Python are also ideal for learning and teaching. For example, I wrote a book recently about digital signal processing (DSP). I used Python to write a simple library and Jupyter (which is a software development environment) to compose online notebooks that combine text, code, and results, including images and sound clips.

As I developed the book, I wrote code to test my understanding and explain it to students at the same time. Students can run the code to develop a mental model, make changes to test their predictions, and extend my code for their projects.

Most textbooks and classes use math to teach signal processing, with students working primarily with paper and pencil. With this approach, the only option is to go “bottom up”, starting with the arithmetic of complex numbers, which is not the most exciting topic, and taking weeks and many pages to get to relevant applications.

With a computational approach, we can go “top down”, starting with libraries that implement the most important algorithms, like Fast Fourier Transform. Students can use the algorithms first and learn how they work later. They can see the most important ideas, like spectral decomposition, without being blinded by details. They can work on real applications, on the first day, that provide the motivation to go deeper. And they can have a lot more fun.To demonstrate, I wrote a Jupyter notebook called “Cacophony for the whole family.” If you click that link, you can see the code and listen to the examples. It uses the library I wrote to simulate the sound of a grade school band, with instruments out of tune and some children randomly playing the wrong note. It’s meant to be silly (and a little bit mean), but it also demonstrates aspects of how we perceive sound and interpret the pitch of a complex signal.

The languages I am calling modern are not particularly new; in fact, Python is more than 25 years old. But they are not yet widely taught in high schools and colleges. And even where they are adopted, they are often used in a style that does not take advantage of their power.

Modern programming languages are qualitatively different from their predecessors, but we are only beginning to realize the implications of that difference.

In a companion article, I present more ways to use Python to think, explore, learn, and teach. 

 



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Goldman Warns The Gap Between Stock Investors' Hopes & Reality Is Close To An All-Time High

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If US GDP growth were tracking sentiment data alone, Goldman estimates the US economy would be growing at its fastest rate of the post-crisis period... But as many saw yesterday - crushing the hopes and dreams of a multitude of over-confident asset-gatherers and commission-takers.

As Goldman Sachs' Himmelberg notes, the music has yet to stop for market sentiment. Sentiment indicators are running extremely high among both households and small businessmen. While there are some signs of a peak in the sentiment surveys, the soft data are still near the highest levels of this expansion.

 

Exhibit 1 drills deeper into the soft data to see precisely where the improvements have been coming from. The cell values in this table (illustrated by the heatmap) show the levels of GDP growth implied by the univariate regressions of our broad CAI on each indicator (plus 12 lags). Both activity-oriented surveys (like ISM) and pure sentiment surveys (like NFIB Small Business Optimism) are running “hot”, while “hard” data indicators, like industrial production, are running cooler (although still quite strong). And the implied magnitudes of GDP growth are unrealistically high, with the Conference Board’s index of consumer expectations implying GDP growth of nearly 5%, and the NFIB’s small business optimism index implying growth of 6.8%.

Sentiment is running high in surveys of investor sentiment as well. The International Center for Finance at Yale School of Management surveys retail and institutional investors for their views on current valuations and one-year-ahead expected returns. In previous reports we have commented on the degree to which expectation measures have been running ahead of measures that survey current conditions. We can similarly use the Yale data to compare “expected one-year returns” to the assessment of “current market valuations”.

The patterns are remarkably similar. Just as in surveys of consumers and businesses, for investors (both retail and institutional), the post-election rise in expectations for year-ahead returns has materially outpaced their relatively sober assessments of valuation. As a result, the difference between the two survey questions – “expected returns” minus “current valuation” – is close to an all-time high.

Exhibit 2 plots this difference for both institutional and retail investors. In October, 83% of institutional investors expected the market to rise in the coming year, while 50% thought the market was too rich. By March, 99% expected the market to be higher in a year’s time, while the percentage who thought valuations were stretched was roughly flat at 49%. In short, optimism appears to be no less pervasive among investors than it is among households and small business.

 

Goldman concludes, we continue to worry that sentiment has moved ahead of the (hard) data, that this divergence will close from the top down.

And that is a long way down.



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Penny Pritzker: My immigrant story

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After settling in Chicago in 1881, my great-great-grandmother, Sophia, helped create a "Nickel Club" to help newly arrived immigrant families like hers who were trying to make it in America.

Sophia helped organize other women to pool together their pennies and nickels to buy food, clothes or whatever the newcomers needed. Some of those immigrants came to escape war or religious persecution; others hoped for economic opportunity; others still came in later decades to study at some of the best schools in the world.

Today, there are more than one million such international students studying in the United States. Their presence generates over

400,000 jobs

and

over $32 billion

worth of domestic economic activity. Yet

a recent study found,

troublingly, that nearly one in three prospective international students surveyed said they had less interest in studying in the United States because of the

current political climate.

The fact is the rhetoric and actions coming from President Donald Trump's administration are making the best and brightest think twice before coming to the United States. This is tragic. Welcoming young foreign-born students to America has long been a key means of exposing them to our people and our values.

Paradoxically, creating an environment in the name of security that makes foreigners less welcome and less likely to visit will make our country less prosperous and, eventually, less secure. Our country faces real threats, but we must not let legitimate -- but narrow -- security concerns desecrate the historic values that have helped to define our nation for more than two centuries.

We can do this better. Our immigration system is broken and, at the same time, many American workers are feeling insecure about their economic future, which makes many of them understandably less hospitable than has been our tradition.

But the approach we are seeing from Washington these days resembles a sledgehammer aimed at the immigration issue, when what we need is a scalpel. The new administration seems to be conflating immigration, terrorism, and economic anxiety in a manner that is economically self-defeating and strategically counterproductive.

The administration has

announced an executive order

to reform the H1B visa system. That is not sufficient.

We need to fix the legal visa process more broadly, use technology to further secure our borders and establish a pathway for the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows. We should make smart changes to the H1B visa process to ensure that we still welcome highly talented people who create jobs here in America, while simultaneously protecting against anyone trying to game the system on the margins to undercut our domestic workforce.

The fact is that we must continue to advance policies that will encourage immigrant entrepreneurs to continue contributing to the American economy

. Almost half of Fortune 500 companies

were founded by immigrants or their children. Some of the country's largest job creators -- including Google, eBay, Intel and Yahoo -- were founded by an immigrant. In my home state of Illinois,

immigrants comprise 22% of the state's entrepreneurs

and employ more than 280,000 people. Immigrants are almost

twice as likely

as native born Americans to start their own businesses.

At the same time that we address our immigration system as a whole, our government should be investing in domestic job training programs that help hardworking Americans get the skills and credentials they need for a 21st century labor market. That means apprenticeships and career development initiatives in new, high-growth fields -- but we must also reexamine our social safety net to ensure it works for the average American, given the flexible nature of so many jobs today.

Simply put, we are risking our economic future by failing to effectively train and recruit a high-skilled workforce. Today, there are more than

500,000 open computing jobs

in the United States, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that by 2020 there will be

1.4 million more software development

jobs than qualified applicants. America offers great opportunities, but our government must make sure our population is prepared for them.

My family has been blessed to live in a country that enabled our education -- and our dreams. The same is true for countless other American families who have contributed to our economy and their communities.

Embracing the best and brightest from around the world and developing a comprehensive strategy to support and train our workers are two things that can be done in concert and will make America stronger. Closing our doors to the generation of students, inventors and investors who will shape our planet's future would be

a costly mistake.

With bipartisan political will, there is a path forward. The time to act is now.



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Call of Duty: WWII Announced

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The series is going back to its roots.

By Marty Sliva

Activision has announced Call of Duty: WWII as the next game in the series. This comes on the heels of various rumors and leaks pointing to the series going back to its historical roots.

Sledgehammer Games is developing Call of Duty: WWII. The studio was previously lead on 2014’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which we scored a 9.1, as well as assisting Infinity Ward on Modern Warfare 3. Co-studio heads and founders Michale Condrey and Glen Schofield previously worked at Visceral on the Dead Space series.

Activision previously stated that this year's entry would "...take Call of Duty back to its roots." This is the first time the Call of Duty series has been set in World War II since 2008’s World at War.

We’ll find out more about the game on Wednesday, April 26 during the Call of Duty: WWII Worldwide Reveal Livestream. Tune in to IGN at 9:45am PT/12:45pm ET/5:45pm BST on April 26 for our pre-show, as well as a deeper analysis into the game following Sledgehammer’s reveal.

Marty Sliva is a Senior Editor at IGN. A girl he was dating once stepped on his PlayStation 4, and now he no longer owns PT. But don't worry, they broke up. Follow him on Twitter @McBiggitty.



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Why Magic: The Gathering Beats Poker or Chess Any Day

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The creators of Magic: The Gathering were painfully aware that their game might be nothing more than a passing fad. So to maintain public interest they created a high-profile Pro Tour for Magic players, complete with TV coverage and cash prizes. It’s a series of events Titus Chalk’s new book Generation Decks, which chronicles the rise of the game from misunderstood novelty to pop culture fixture, investigates in detail.

“There’s a quote in the book from one of the very few executives who was behind the idea at the time, Rick Arons, and he said, ‘Your grandmother might not understand what Magic: The Gathering is, but she’ll understand what a check for $10,000 is,'” Chalk says in Episode 252 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

The strategy paid off, helping to foster a group of professional Magic players like Jon Finkel and David Williams who grew up in the spotlight and were accustomed to high-stakes card games. Having mastered the fiendishly complex rules of Magic, they found it relatively easy to compete in a much simpler game like poker. “As soon as they turned 18 they showed up at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and made a huge impression,” Chalk says. “They blew this very staid gaming culture out of the water.”

And while computer systems have been solving games like chess and Go, and handily beating even the top-ranked human players, Chalk says that a game like Magic, where the rules can change significantly with each new card, remains the province of flesh-and-blood champions. “There’s just enough of a random factor to make the game incredibly unpredictable,” he says. “And that’s also what makes it so difficult for a Deep Blue to come and start beating the Jon Finkels of the world.”

Chalk hopes that Generation Decks will bring more attention to the accomplishments of players like Finkel and Williams, as well as to people like Richard Garfield and Peter Adkison who created the game.

Listen to our complete interview with Titus Chalk in Episode 252 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Titus Chalk on Magic art:

“One of the things I discovered in the game were just these amazing illustrations, which weren’t like the fantasy illustrations that I was seeing in other games at the time. And part of the reason for that is that they turned to local Seattle students—who were desperate for a paying gig—and they weren’t, by definition, fantasy artists. They were just art students from the local art school, interpreting their briefs in a very different way than someone who’d been perhaps steeped in D&D culture or whatever the prevailing fantasy culture was at the time. And I really loved that, I really loved the much more abstract feel of these cards. … To see this strange, creative game coming out of Seattle, it just kind of tapped into the whole mythology around Seattle at the time.”

Titus Chalk on Peter Adkison:

“He was in his day job at Boeing, which is one of the big companies up in Seattle that employs a lot of people. … [He] had much better computers at work than he did in his basement, and he would stay late at night, while the janitors were making their rounds, working on his new gaming company. And Marilyn, one of the janitors at Boeing, would be chatting with him every night. … One evening Marilyn came up to him and gave him a check for her life savings and said, ‘I don’t understand what you’re doing. I don’t understand what a fantasy game is. But I see you working every night so hard that I believe you’re going to make it. Here’s my life savings. I’d like some shares please. Invest it in your game.’ And later on, when the game did very well, she was able to make a lot of money.”

Titus Chalk on the controversy surrounding Magic:

“There were cards called ‘Demonic Tutor’ or ‘Sacrifice’ which added to the edgy feel at the time, and some people took offense at this. And this one woman in the Bedford school district tried to get Magic banned, and it led to this big hoo-ha, where the [administrator] for the district had to ban it in his schools, and he then took the game to child psychologists and said, ‘Is there anything here that could harm kids?’ And he had to get this clean bill of health to allow kids to play it in the school district. … It ended in a massive legal fight that took years to clear up.”

Titus Chalk on Richard Garfield:

“I don’t think I would have been able to do the game justice if I hadn’t had a chance to speak with him. He’s a real hero, for not just myself, but for anyone who’s picked up the game and had it affect them in that way. From perhaps being a bit of an outcast or looking for something to belong to, Richard Garfield is this sort of spiritual father figure for all us Magic players. … He’s just an absolutely down-to-earth, lovely guy. As I said, a little bit spacey—I think he’d be the first to admit that. He’s clearly got a million ideas for different games ticking away up there in his brain. But he was really accommodating, and I think he’s acutely aware of not just inventing a game that people like, but having invented a game that really changed the way people feel about themselves.”



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Sway Is a Beautiful Meditation App That Doesn't Tell You What to Think

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Spoiler alert: These are the colors of the six levels.

What if a meditation app didn’t ask you to focus on your breathing? What if you didn’t have to listen to someone’s voice telling you what to think about? A new meditation app, Sway, takes a different approach.

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Instead, Sway (iOS, $2.99) connects your mind and body by asking you to move your phone slowly and continuously. When you do, it plays soothing sounds and undulates a colorful landscape on your screen. If you move too fast or too slow, it chimes and asks if you’re ready to end the session.

I’ve tried a lot of meditation apps, and Sway is the most beautiful I’ve seen. The aesthetic comes from UsTwo, the same people who designed the achingly gorgeous Monument Valley game. And I love that it doesn’t ask me to focus on my breathing, because when I do that my nose always starts to feel weird.

To keep you coming back, Sway has six levels, and you can only unlock one each day. If you miss a day, you backtrack a level. On the first day, you meet your goal (announced with a gentle chime) after just three minutes. The next day, it takes four. Then six, then 10, and finally 20 minutes. The app’s makers hope you build a 20-minute-a-day habit.

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The levels have different colors and, I think, different soundscapes. Each level introduces a different idea, too. At first, you just move your phone. In the second level, you’re encouraged to look away from the screen (pretty as it is) and use sound from your headphones as your feedback. My favorite was the level called “Balance,” where you walk as slowly as possible, challenging yourself to stay steady even while you’re on one foot. You’re just walking, but mindfully.

You may feel a little self conscious Swaying while waiting for the bus, although happily it works just fine to have the phone in your pocket while you’re walking from place to place. In any case, this app is a novel way to meditate that is easy on the eyes and the ears.



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Teach Yourself Computer Science

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Frequently asked questions

What about AI/graphics/pet-topic-X?

We’ve tried to limit our list to computer science topics that we feel every practicing software engineer should know, irrespective of specialty or industry. With this foundation, you’ll be in a much better position to pick up textbooks or papers and learn the core concepts without much guidance. Here are our suggested starting points for a couple of common “electives”:

  • For artificial intelligence: do Berkeley’s intro to AI course by watching the videos and completing the excellent Pacman projects. As a textbook, use Russell and Norvig’s Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach.
  • For machine learning: do Andrew Ng’s Coursera course. Be patient, and make sure you understand the fundamentals before racing off to shiny new topics like deep learning.

How strict is the suggested sequencing?

Realistically, all of these subjects have a significant amount of overlap, and refer to one another cyclically. Take for instance the relationship between discrete math and algorithms: learning math first would help you analyze and understand your algorithms in greater depth, but learning algorithms first would provide greater motivation and context for discrete math. Ideally, you’d revisit both of these topics many times throughout your career.

As such, our suggested sequencing is mostly there to help you just get started… if you have a compelling reason to prefer a different sequence, then go for it. The most significant “pre-requisites” in our opinion are: computer architecture before operating systems or databases, and networking and operating systems before distributed systems.

Who is the target audience for this guide?

We have in mind that you are a self-taught software engineer, bootcamp grad or precocious high school student, or a college student looking to supplement your formal education with some self-study. The question of when to embark upon this journey is an entirely personal one, but most people tend to benefit from having some professional experience before diving too deep into CS theory. For instance, we notice that students love learning about database systems if they have already worked with databases professionally, or about computer networking if they’ve worked on a web project or two.

How does this compare to Open Source Society or freeCodeCamp curricula?

The OSS guide has too many subjects, suggests inferior resources for many of them, and provides no rationale or guidance around why or what aspects of particular courses are valuable. We strove to limit our list of courses to those which you really should know as a software engineer, irrespective of your specialty, and to help you understand why each course is included.

freeCodeCamp is focused mostly on programming, not computer science. For why you might want to learn computer science, see above.

What about language X?

Learning a particular programming language is on a totally different plane to learning about an area of computer science — learning a language is much easier and much less valuable. If you already know a couple of languages, we strongly suggest simply following our guide and fitting language acquisition in the gaps, or leaving it for afterwards. If you’ve learned programming well (such as through Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs), and especially if you have learned compilers, it should take you little more than a weekend to learn the essentials of a new language.

What about trendy technology X?

No single technology is important enough that learning to use it should be a core part of your education. On the other hand, it’s great that you’re excited to learn about that thing. The trick is to work backwards from the particular technology to the underlying field or concept, and learn that in depth before seeing how your trendy technology fits into the bigger picture.

Why are you still recommending the Dragon book?

The Dragon book is still the most complete single resource for compilers. It gets a bad rap, typically for overemphasizing certain topics that are less fashionable to cover in detail these days, such as parsing. The thing is, the book was never intended to be studied cover to cover, only to provide enough material for an instructor to put together a course. Similarly, a self-learner can choose their own adventure through the book, or better yet follow the suggestions that lecturers of public courses have made in their course outlines.

How can I get textbooks cheaply?

Many of the textbooks we suggest are freely available online, thanks to the generosity of their authors. For those that aren’t, we suggest buying used copies of older editions. As a general rule, if there has been more than a couple of editions of a textbook, it’s quite likely that an older edition is perfectly adequate. It’s certainly unlikely that the newest version is 10x better than an older one, even if that’s what the price difference is!

Who made this?

This guide was written by Ozan Onay and Myles Byrne, instructors at the Bradfield School of Computer Science in San Francisco. It is based on our experience teaching foundational computer science to hundreds of mostly self-taught engineers and bootcamp grads. Thank you to all of our students for your continued feedback on self-teaching resources. Thanks too to Alek Sharma, Omar Rayward, Ammar Mian and Tyler Bettilyon for feedback on this guide.



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YouTube: Memorializing Hockey in Unusual Ways

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Everyone has a camera these day, and social media has taken over with these devices, YouTube is one of the fastest growing media sites and hockey is on its radar. The cellular revolution has pretty much made certain that every mobile phone now has a camera attached. Gone are the days of the bulky video cameras, and now are the ways of the slim, fits in your pocket, ready at any moment video taking device. While these cameras are awesome for catching your baby’s first step at a moment’s notice, they are also adept at catching others at their first or second misstep. With the advent of YouTube, everyone with a smart phone is now a potential film maker. I perused through the recent archives of YouTube to see exactly how YouTube views hockey. It is fairly easy to access the archives of history both good and bad on YouTube.
When it comes to the sport of hockey, is YouTube helping to preserve our best and most powerful images in hockey, or our worst? What exactly does YouTube have to show about hockey?

The Good

Every once in a while, we get a commercial that makes us stop and stare. Seeing something so ncredible as Bobby Orr flying through the air, is one of those times. Some commercials encourage us to buy this or that, The History Will Be Made commercial, made us want to fly too, and it certainly made us want to stick with watching the playoffs in 2001. The commercial series also has one of the best musical scores made, making every commercial historical in its own right. YouTube did good in preserving this awesome piece of hockey advertising.
History Will Be Made Commercials

After the tumultuous fall, we all need a reason to get excited about hockey. This YouTube clip illustrates the desire to turn up the love and turn back on our sets, after all Hockey is Back! Something even YouTube can’t deny.
Hockey is Back

The Great

There’s something that the coolest goals, the best saves, and the most awesome fights can’t hold a candle to. You know it’s ‘Hockey Night In Canada!’ when you hear, ‘The Good Old Hockey Game.’ By Stompin Tom Connors. We lost this icon of hockey history last week on March 6, 2013 at the age of 77. He had a lot of songs, but can’t imagine Saturday nights without him. YouTube definitely placed him in perpetuity, a pioneer and a poster boy for our love of hockey.
The Good Old Hockey Game

The Sad

One of the most difficult things in a sport or organization is lose someone, albeit in the most horrific of all instances a whole branch or team. Team Locomotiv Yaroslavl of Russia failed to gain altitude, catching fire therefore losing all 45 people on board except for the avionics flight engineer on September 7, 2011. The wonderful thing about YouTube is that things we ordinarily wouldn’t have an opportunity to see due to events in other cities and other times, we can now see. This tribute is one I can’t imagine seeing in person without a handkerchief or tissues, it’s that we’ll done, and that worth preserving.
Ruslan Salei Sand Art Memorial

One of the most touching things about video memorials, and especially this one dedicated to the whole of the Yaroslavl Locomotiv team, is that they preserve people at their prime. YouTube captures them at their best, their youngest, their strongest. Those guys who p,sued their hearts out, will never grow old, never lose their youth, never retire. They will be alive and well, young and vibrant for all of eternity. This is how we are supposed to be remembered.
KHL Memorial

The Bad

Can something as ground breaking as YouTube, ever make a misstep? Well, since its videographers are human, yes it can. And never more than when you give a kid a camera. While YouTube can preserve great moments, it can also preserve great embarrassments. Take the team from Nyack. Some kid got the great idea to do a hockey room rendition of the Harlem Shake, and post it on YouTube. Now their playoffs are history. While my back round is in education, (I may get pummeled for my opinion) I think pulling the kids out of the play offs is a bit harsh. Serving detention for a month, assisting the custodians, etc. is more appropriate than taking away something they earned due to a video that thousands have replicated. This is definitely one team that will learn more than improved power skating over the summer. They will have learned to leave the power of leaving their phone at home.
The Harlem Shake

Life in other countries always intrigues us. Do they eat they way we do? Do they raise their kids like us? Do their kids p,ay hockey like us? Well, in the Russian town, they play hockey, for sure. And it’s a bloodsport, but it’s a ten year old bloodsport. I was surprised to see that so many kids drew penalties and were so aggressive. The video is kind of funny, but yet really sad in that these are the future players of some pro teams. Hockey parents and coaches must be win at all costs, But it isn’t always the best way to win at that age. Do all hockey enforcers come from the same place? If not, they might all in the not so near future!
10 year old Teams In The SIn Bin

The Joy of Victory

If you’re an Amercian, and you aren’t a fan of hockey, there’s no doubt that you were a huge fan on this particular day. Back in the Cold War beginning Reganomics era, anything to do with Russia was frowned upon. Except for beating them. Take a group of college kids, let them practice, throw Ina crusty coach, and pray for a miracle. When you find out one of the powerhouses of hockey-Russia to say the least was going to play you for the Olympic gold, you do a lot more than sweat. I bet those guys were having panic attacks. How else could we explain that to the Russians they just lost a game they thought they could easily win; while our confidence didn’t allow for that fact, we couldn’t believe we won, and still can’t theirty years later. A miracle on ice it was and always will be.

1980 Do You Believe in Miracles

Last year was a great draft year. I admit being partial to the Avalanche, and boy did we get the good end of the deal when the Oilers went with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Being second doesn’t always mean being picked last. Colorado has a history of playing their drafts, and boy did second pick Gabriel Landeskog of the Kitchener Rangers get some play time. He even inadvertently created a new word and physical position for winning a goal-Landeskogging. He takes every bit out of the joy he deserves in making some of the greatest most needed goals. He is one fun guy to watch. I can only hope we see a lot more Landeskogging in the future.

Landeskogging

The Agony of Defeat

You might remember years ago if you’re an American, Saturday afternoon on the television were reserved for sports. They even had a great commercial that showed the examples of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. The thrill of victory in this article, I had to cover with the 1980′s Do You Believe In Miracles. The agony of defeat clearly goes Ryan Miller in the gold winning game of USA Hockey versus Canada.
I wonder how many nights he’s gone over that last goal in his head. We’ve forgiven him, but has he forgotten? Can you forget something like that? Maybe 2014 in Souchi will let someone else be the poor guy failing head or heels down a snow bank instead of Miller.

Miller in Olympics

The Funny

Now what would article on hockey through Youtube’s eyes, be without bloopers. Sadly for the athletes, some of the funniest moments in history for the fans, are the moments the athletes would rather we forget. Here’s a sampling of some of the classic bloopers that we can’t seem to let go, no matter how much we love the game.
Bloopers

The Just Plain Angry
If YouTube has done any real damage to hockey, it’s been in letting amateur’s catch us at our worst. Jim Mayfair is the perfect example. After being given a bad call, he flat out LOSES it! The two guys on either side of him are I’m sure were,praying he wouldn’t destroy their sticks. The poor guy looked like he was going to choke himself pulling off his coat and hang himself with his tie on accident.

The Coach Losing It

The Truly Scary

The scariest things YouTube documentsmaremthe injuries. Throat slitting is a big one. It doesn’t happen,frequently, but when it does, you can bet someone’s videoing it. These accidents are as frightening as concussions. The next time you see a guy play NBA or NHL, remember those big boys may fall hard, but they don’t get potentially exsanguinated by the other players’s shoes. These video clips are painful to watch, yet propel us to think of better safety rules.
Throat slit by skate

And the Just Shaking My Head Query

One of the most impressive feats in hockey is Zdeno Chara’s slap shot. The math and physics of his shooting skill is mind boggling. I’m always impressed with the goalies who have to defend their goals against one of his shots.

This leads me into the perfect example of why you should stay way from this guy: if he can shoot that hard and fast, what kind of damage can he do in a fight? What’s more, there are people who actually willing and do fight with him. To me they look little more like rag dolls being tossed around in the hands of the Zman.

I like YouTube. I like a lot of things about it. It’s accessible, you get to relive those great moments, see a moving tribute to someone who deserves our respect and admiration and to live into eternity. I think the following statement applies to hockey fans, ‘If you want to know what someone fears losing, look at what they photograph.’
Just don’t leave the videography in the hands of your child!

Author information

Cherie Tinker
Cherie Tinker
Hockey History Writer at The Hockey Writers
Interests: Reading, writing, art, music, movies, history, and HOCKEY! BS.Ed., MS.Ed.

This article was originally published at: The Hockey Writers.



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