(Update 5/9/2013)
It's official; I've filed the paperwork to retire July 1, 2013.
There are three big projects I expect to continue work on next year, so I'll still be around much of the time:
is a visual, drag-and-drop programming language inspired by
Scratch, a very popular language
for kids from the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab,
but with features added to make it usable in teaching computer science
courses, most notably first class procedures (of course) and first class
lists. It runs in your
browser. Snap! 4.0 is now in beta release but should be official
by the fall. It is used in the Berkeley course CS 10.
(the
Beauty and Joy of Computing) is the name of the CS 10 curriculum.
Dan Garcia and I got NSF funding
for FRABJOUS CS, our fiendish plot
to take over the world of high school CS education with BJC.
As I did last summer, I'm going to spend much of summer 2013 going
around the country (and to Portugal!) teaching teachers BJC.
The Structure and Interpretation of Computer
Programs is still the best computer science book ever written,
and I plan to edX-ify the SICP version of 61A.
I'll be a little short of 64 when I retire. I'm feeling somewhat older than my years (because of a life of no exercise, I suppose) but also tired of grading and all the hassles associated with grading (writing exams, grading exams, arguing with students about part credit, dealing with cheaters). One of the great things about my previous (high school) teaching job is that I somehow talked the school into letting me not give grades; not much hope of that at Berkeley. (And thanks to my TAs over the past few years for carrying more and more of the weight of writing and grading the exams!)
I also volunteer at a local elementary school, and I may even teach CS 195/H195 once in a while. (In fall 2013 I'm team-teaching it with Prof. Marti Hearst.)
Brian's Last Lecture (Quicktime)