I started programming computers when I was in 5th grade, and bought myself a (crappy) computer in 6th grade with money I'd saved from a paper route coupled with "matching funds" from my parents. Believe it or not, this is not the nerdly confession referenced in the title.
When I was in 8th and 9th grade, I got really excited by computer graphics and animation. Join the club, right? If you're a kid who's into computers, there's a high likelihood that you want to make pretty pictures.
Anyway, I wrote all sorts of cool (in my mind, at the time) mathematical pictures, and plotted them on my crappy little Radio Shack plotter, or animated them with some kludgy hack.
So anyway, being in 8th or 9th grade, and a giant socially-awkward nerd, I of course had unrequited crushes on any number of girls. Obviously I was in no position to impress anyone with my athletic prowess or conversational skills so in my mind my only hope was to impress them with my programming acumen. How ludicrous this is must have occurred to me because thankfully I never actually tried this.
However! If you are the 2009 version of me in 1985, and use orkut, I am working on the tools to let you do something awesome! I've been working on making it easy to embed gadgets -- that you can write yourself! -- into IM conversations. So here is my formula for wooing a girl, young nerd:
NOTE: If you're a girl, just s/girl/boy/ below. Or you know, s/girl/boy/ at your discretion, no matter your gender.
- Join orkut. (you could do this all on facebook or probably most other social networks, too, but without the real-time awesomeness)
- Sign up for the orkut developer sandbox.
- Make friends online with a girl. This is way easier than being friends in real life!
- Make sure said girl is also on the orkut developer sandbox. Hopefully she's a nerd too.
- Write an awesome gadget. See the orkut chat gadgets documentation for more info.
- Send this gadget to the girl you're friends with.
- Impress her with the excellence of your programming skills.
- If you used the gadgets.sharedstate API, interact with the girl in real time!
- Figure the rest out on your own, buddy!
If you do this, PLEASE LET ME KNOW (with a link to your gadget). While supplies last, I will send you a Google T-shirt. These are way hotter than varsity jackets, trust me.