Down the Rabbit Hole: How Alice Turned Computer Coding Into a Wonderland (with Melanie Lam)

Thirty years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch asked a simple question: What if anyone could learn to program a computer? Not just computer scientists, not just engineers. What if kids could learn coding the same way they learned to tell stories, build worlds, and play games?

In this episode we explore one of Carnegie Mellon's most enduring innovations: Alice, the drag-and-drop program that has introduced millions of students to coding through storytelling. As CMU marks its 125th anniversary and Alice turns 30, guest Melanie Lam — Director of the Alice Project at CMU's Entertainment Technology Center — traces the software's remarkable journey.

Created by legendary professor Randy Pausch, Alice began in 1995 as a Virtual Reality prototyping tool created for Pausch’s famed Building Virtual Worlds course. Lam shares how she first encountered Alice at CMU as a journalism graduate with no coding background, used it to tell a moving story in her very first week, and went on to design games at Activision and Electronic Arts before returning to steward Pausch's legacy back at CMU with the Alice Project.

The conversation follows Alice's evolution from CD-ROMs to free online access to Sims 2 character integration for better storytelling. Currently, Lam is leading a major interface update and exploring ways AI can make Alice even more accessible for students.

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