Mariko Kosaka

Influence of Type(setting) in Programming

Knitting some Javascript at Scripto

Influence of Type(setting) in Programming

What do you imagine when you hear "letter press" or "Typeseter"? You might think of Gutenberg Bible or hip print shop in Brooklyn, but Typesetting machine attracted many engineer's creative curiosity long before everyone had own home printer or a website.

Typesetting machine was invented out of do "not repeat yourself" momentarily, and one of 1st machinery to be automated. Before we had computer screen, programmers were making domain specific language to print an image with code. Ken Thompson once hacked on typesetter to create Emoji for his Chess machine. Modern software like WYSIWIG editor would not exist if these creative minds didn't put ink on their fingers. Let's look back the part of computing history that underlays our daily activity like write documentation in markdown and reacting with Emoji!

Talk Objectives

Audience will walk away with fun knowledge of where some programing idioms comes form. 

Target Audience

Everyone interested in strange computer history.

About Mariko

Mariko currently writes Javascript at Scripto, a company making television production applications.
Previously, she worked as an Internal Tool Engineer at Percolate, making dev tools, automation script, and data visualisations.

Github: kosamari

Twitter: @kosamari

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