I found The Last Lecture while looking for a motivational book to gift my brother. Do you think a 14yo could appreciate Randy's writings? I'd like to instill him with a sense of perseverance, responsibility and long-term vision.
Absolutely! I don't want to spoil it for others that may not have seen or read it yet, but you know the ending and why he wrote it.
While he may not fully understand everything (the lessons, not the words), this is the kind of book that I still go back and read every couple of years and still try to pick up something new each time. I'm sure he can pick up things that are relevant to him today and still find new lessons for years to come.
I read this book after my mom suggested it to me in 8th grade (14 years old!) and it was the reason I ended up setting my sights on CMU for college. I know that a 14yo could appreciate it.
Similiar to other posters, I read this book in middle school and found it a great inspiration then.
I actually at the time got really big in to Alice[1] a gui based programming environment Pausch pioneered and it led to a lot of my earlier computing experiences.
I'd highly recommend the book for any young teen as it paints an incredibly optimistic picture of the world, which is something to be said when you consider Pausch had terminal cancer.
In all honesty to this day Pausch remains one of my greatest inspirations.
As an EE undergrad at UVa in the early 90s, I was fascinated by all things virtual reality. Someone suggested I go meet with this rising star prof, Randy Pausch, who was doing some very interesting work in the field. I was fortunate to hang out with him and his grad students for about a semester, getting exposed to 3D graphics and 3D paint programs, 3D spaces, the VPL glove, SGI machines. It was, for lack of a better word, magical. Many years later, I heard about the last lecture and was sad to hear it was the very same prof I knew. I realized how many of the ideas and technologies I was exposed to back then had become very real many years later.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 47.1 ms ] threadWhile he may not fully understand everything (the lessons, not the words), this is the kind of book that I still go back and read every couple of years and still try to pick up something new each time. I'm sure he can pick up things that are relevant to him today and still find new lessons for years to come.
I actually at the time got really big in to Alice[1] a gui based programming environment Pausch pioneered and it led to a lot of my earlier computing experiences.
I'd highly recommend the book for any young teen as it paints an incredibly optimistic picture of the world, which is something to be said when you consider Pausch had terminal cancer.
In all honesty to this day Pausch remains one of my greatest inspirations.
[1]: http://www.alice.org/index.php
Thanks for reminding me to rewatch this again...