Technical Direction · Year 26 classes · 24 hours
Computer Science
for Theatre and Technical Direction
Code is a description of what should happen, executed literally, on a deadline you do not control. AI changes who writes the first draft and nothing about who is responsible for it.
Six four-hour classes. Every one has an idea to understand and something to build, because in this trade knowing and doing are the same skill measured twice.
The shape of the course
Three units of two classes. The first class of a unit opens the idea and gets it onto the keyboard; the second builds something that only works if the idea was understood. That is the whole structure, and it repeats three times.
The six classes
Unit 1The machine and the language
Why a Technical Director Writes Code
What a computer actually does, why literal is the whole problem, and the four questions you ask any program.
undefinedh at the keyboard Open → 2Inside the Language
Source to running, types, references, floating point, patchers and blocks, and where each language came from.
undefinedh at the keyboard Open →Unit 2Working like an engineer
Data, Structure and Keeping the Work
Choosing the shape, the growth curve that ambushes you, messy real exports, and version control as an undo you can trust.
undefinedh at the keyboard Open → 4Coding With AI
What the model is really doing, what that predicts about where it fails, and the verification loop that makes it usable.
undefinedh at the keyboard Open →Unit 3Making it real
From Code to Effect: Arduino and Raspberry Pi
Microcontroller against computer, the loop deadline, the blocking bug, getting a cue in, and what your effect does when it is alone.
undefinedh at the keyboard Open → 6Capstone: Build It, Prove It, Hand It Over
One real thing, working, surviving bad input, failing the way you specified, and runnable by somebody who has never seen it.
undefinedh at the keyboard Open →The four questions
One habit runs through every class, and it works on code you have never seen, in a language you do not know, at 23:40 during a technical rehearsal. Ask it of anything: your own script, a contractor's firmware, or whatever a model handed you four seconds ago.
1 · State
What does it remember between one moment and the next, and where does that memory live? A program with no state is a calculator. Everything that fails oddly has state.
2 · Each pass
What does it do, in order, when it runs once? If it loops, what does one turn do, and how often does the loop turn?
3 · Assumptions
What must already be true for it to work? A file, a device at an address, a value in range, a network that is up. These are never written down and they are where the show breaks.
4 · Failure
Does it stop, hang, hold its last value, or carry on with nonsense? The professional question. Anybody can read what code does when it works.
How every class runs
An hour or so of why
The idea, with figures you can break. Not a lecture: the explainers exist so you can push the thing into the failure the class is about, which is the only way the numbers stop being decoration.
Two hours at the keyboard
Write it, run it on a copy, break it, prove it. Every class produces something you keep, or a measurement you wrote down and can defend.
A quiz you have already seen
A few minutes of numbers at the top of every class, drawn from the same deck that is on this site. Nothing is a surprise and nothing is a trick.
What is on this platform
A preparation path
What to do before each class, what you must already be able to do, and a readiness check that names the exact thing to go and fix rather than telling you a score.
Foundations
Bits, bases, prefixes, files and eight commands in a terminal. Forty minutes, done once, and the rest of the course stops fighting you.
The working rules
The four that are never negotiable, the five second check before anything that writes, and the sentence that has never been accepted in an incident report.
14 calculators
Number bases, floating point, growth at scale, loop budgets, latency, serial and DMX timing, PWM, ADC, pixels and universes, frames, bitrate, render time and what a model costs. Each shows its working.
The lab: write it and run it
An editor, a console and a REPL that run in the page. 16 exercises whose tests are the brief, 10 block challenges for the same subject with the syntax removed, and a blank page for building something of your own. JavaScript instantly, real Python when you ask for it, nothing installed, nothing reported to anybody.
The model box
A 1:25 white card model wired as a complete show system: pixels, a network, an automation cue and a Pi playing sound, for the price of one seat at a decent opera.
Boards, and what each is bad at
Arduino, ESP32 and Raspberry Pi, with prices, three worked effects, and the four questions that end the argument fastest.
Buy, build, or glue
The products you will meet, what each is really doing underneath, and six case studies to argue in the room before you look at the answer.
Four drills
Flashcards for every examinable number, reading real code and predicting what it does, spot the myth, and a fault diagnosis simulator scored on the order you investigate in.
148 terms, bilingual
English and 繁體中文, grouped by domain, with a live filter and a flashcard mode.
The field card
Shell, Python, git, Node, Arduino and a Pi over the network, on one printable page, with the order to check things in when something is wrong.
The four courses
The same ideas seen from Electronics, Computer Systems and Show Networking: which one goes deepest on what, what is taught twice on purpose, and what is deliberately not here.
The other courses, and who they are for
Three cohorts and four courses, and nobody takes all four. Technical Direction takes Electronics then Computer Science; Media Design and Technology takes Computer Systems; the elective assumes neither. Where two of these reach the same object they reach it from different positions and ask different questions of it, which is set out in full on how the four relate.
- →
Electronics for Theatre
Technical Direction, year 1 · core
Below the connector: what electricity does in a building, proved with a meter. - →
Computer Systems and Networking
Media Design and Technology, year 1 · core
The machine and the network under the show, for audio, lighting and video artists. - This one
Computer Science for Theatre
Technical Direction, year 2 · core
The instructions themselves: code, AI, and what your program does when it is alone. - →
Show Networking and Control Systems
Elective · assumes none of the others
The agreements between two devices, protocol by protocol, against the standard text. - →
showstack
Open index · not a course
Where all four check their numbers and their bilingual terms, with a citation on each.