Lily Madar

Programming with yarn

Computers can take an unexpected form; historically they started as humans. Without realising it, crocheters interpret their own patterns, thus becoming “computers”. Does this then make crochet a form of programming language? By exploring the origins and evolution of crochet and yarn crafts in parallel with the origins of computing (Babbage’s Analytical Engine), this talk draws the analogies between a crafty — analogue — discipline and what we, as developers, know of programming.

As well as interesting historical facts, this talk hopefully provides a simple way of explaining key programming concepts and highlights the logical thinking necessary to get into coding.

We will cover several notions that can be illustrated with crochet, such as: patterns and instructions, language versioning, compilers, debugging, variables, multithreading, loops and recursion...