Re: [hangout] Re: pittance

At 06:45 AM 4/13/2004, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:

>Similarly, sure, we can teach almost anyone to read a computer program.

I don't necessarily even agree with that... wasn't this the whole concept 
behind COBOL? i.e. that being written in English looking verbiage the 
source code's meaning was then accessible to management? IMO reading 
implies comprehension, and while reading and writing are different skills 
they are strongly related. Therefore if you could teach a person to read & 
comprehend a program you could also teach them to write one.

Related I think. My 12 yr old is interested in taking a programming course 
in 8th or 9th grade. When she told me that I brought up a shell and then 
showed her this:

perl -e 'print "hello/n"'

and asked her what she thought would happen when she entered it.

Then I showed her this:

perl -e 'while(1) { print "hello/n";sleep 3 }'


I wanted to show her that a program could be an intuitive thing. Of course 
when I showed her set theory and applied it to probability two summers ago 
it was clear to me that she had just the kind of abstract mind that I 
believe all of us have, that Randal mentioned and that she'd need if she 
wants to become a programmer.

For me the attraction to programming has always been the thrill of making 
something work. So that's how I plan on introducing it to my kid if she 
develops an interest. FWIW.

>But the skill to *write* a computer program is not necessarily
>trainable to everyone.  It requires some innate sense of abstract
>reasoning and problem solving that is definitely available only to a
>small portion of the adult population in my experience.

Heh, the way I look at it is that it requires honesty and truthfulness. 
Everyone learns rules, and also that there are ways to cheat you can get 
away with. That attitude if tempered properly may work well in people 
relationships but in instructing a machine there is far less 'slack' 
available. Hope that makes sense, just my two cents.

>Maybe some of you live sheltered lives, hanging out only with nerds.
>You gotta get out more often. :)

My wife is a fine pianist and also an accountant. And she is very skilled 
at using her computer at work. Yet she still doesn't get the difference 
between programs and data - she'll ask me in the context of our home office 
where a file is and I'll ask her where she saved it and invariably the 
answer is "quickbooks" or "word". As a developer I'm very concerned with 
usability and this has been a red light for me. It underlines the fact that 
I have no clue how most of my users actually experience the software I write.

Marty