I found a teacher: Huw Collingbourne

[sorcerer_see]

I feel inspired by Huw Collingbourne.

I got to know him when I encountered 'The Little Book Of Adventure Game Programming: Program Retro Text Adventures':
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Adventure-Game-Programming-ebook/dp/B08231LMWL

Next I found him in YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@LearnWithHuw

He turns out to be a lover of the programming language Pascal, which is a language I feel attracted to besides C.

Why do I like and admire him?
Because, to me, he is what resembles a true master:

- he is humble, balanced, not a conformist and not a fanatic
- he has respect for, and understanding of, both the old as well as the new
- he respects the essence of what programming is
- he is authentic, devoid of fashion and fad
- he searches the truth rather than self-identity
- he does his own thing, regardless of what the masses do
- to him, his passion for programming is more important than his need for money, while realizing he also does need money to survive and thrive
- he is satisfied with older computers
- he values programming languages for what they are rather than how popular they may be
- he has that typically British radiance of self control and conscientiousness over him
etc ...

He is a refreshing appearance, compared to the attention seeking fashion addicted hype -surfing flashy developer crowd that seem to be the vast majority of programmers these days.

I want to go beyond appearances and touch what is real, in everything, and in this case with programming. Learning from him will certainly help me in this regard.

He made me realize (again) how the specific language we use to program is only superficially important and how understanding the universal underlying mechanisms and principles of computers and computer programming is what makes one a true master of programming. Which is totally what I am aiming for.

While searching more information about him it turns out that he did and does a lot more than programming a bit as a hobby:

"Huw Collingbourne is the technology director at SapphireSteel Software, developers of programming tools for Microsoft Visual Studio. He is author of The Little Book Of C, The Little Book Of Pointers and The Little Book Of Recursion from Bitwise Books and of The Book Of Ruby from No Starch Press. He runs Bitwise Courses and teaches courses on a range of programming topics. 

     Huw has been a programmer for more than 30 years. He is a well-known technology writer in the UK. For over ten years he wrote the Delphi and Java programming column for PC Plus Magazine.  He has also written numerous opinion and programming columns (including tutorials on C#, C++, Smalltalk and Ruby) for a number of computer magazines, such as Computer Shopper, PC Pro, and PC Plus. 

     In the 1980s he was a pop music journalist and interviewed most of the New Romantic stars, such as Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Adam Ant, Boy George, and Depeche Mode. He is now writing a series of 1980s murder mysteries. 

     At various times Huw has been a magazine publisher, editor, and TV broadcaster. He has an MA in English from the University of Cambridge and holds a 2nd dan black belt in aikido, a martial art which he teaches in North Devon, UK. The aikido comes in useful when trying (usually unsuccessfully) to keep his Pyrenean Mountain Dogs under some semblance of control. "

He really is a master in many things, a gifted polymath, a creative soul, who has been successful in his creations, in his life, in my eyes. Certainly, he is someone I wish to learn from.