Ada
Years ago I dove into the programming language Ada. The NASA lab was funding me was deep into it, but they were far away, and no one here was interested. Here, it was either FORTRAN, or it was C. But I had drunk the Kool-Aide. Ada was difficult to learn in isolation but not impossible. And it enabled amazing things — things that gave me big ideas. Still, there was no one to talk to about it.
My son periodically jokes about how his mom told him years later that I would come home late at night and go on interminably about Ada. She was a captive audience, and I was desperate to share my excitement. But as I went on, her eyes would droop, and her head would begin to bob.
“Ada…,” so their joke goes. “Zzzz.”
LaTeX
Over the last severn years of teaching Algebra 2, I’ve assembled a year’s worth of guided notes in a format that… in a nice format.
I’d love to talk to you about my rationale for the visual appearance of the notes. And I’d love to talk to you about the LaTeX-based system I’ve built (See it here, if you dare.) There is much to say about the system, from the gorgeous math, to its ability to generate a “blank” student version of the notes and a “filled in” teacher version with answers and commentary in red.
Wait. Don’t leave yet.
The system enables the generation a full year’s worth of notes (either the student or the teacher version) as a single PDF in book form, including a hyperlinked table of contents that will take you directly to (say) Lesson 4.3.
No, wait. I haven’t finished.
The VS Code/LaTeX build automation allows a single set of LaTeX source files to generate either version without any duplication — a capability based on Unix symbolic links. The unit tests. The GitHub integration. I’d love to talk about it.
I see that I’ve lost you.
“LaTex-based algebra guided notes…,” so it goes, “Zzzz.”