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You can't really teach such a thing, not in any profound way. The programmer in question must have an intrinsic or otherwise self-conditioned drive to read comp

You can't really teach such a thing, not in any profound way. The programmer in question must have an intrinsic or otherwise self-conditioned drive to read computing history, papers and be interested in actually doing research before starting a project. We have largely crafted a culture where doing research before writing code is considered slow and ineffectual for whatever reason. Instead, we value "moving fast and breaking things" and whipping up the quick hack, which encourages people to propagate their computing biases and never step out of their comfort zone. This is one of the reasons why I mostly scoff at attempts to make computer programming a compulsory schooling subject. Coding as "the new literacy" devalues computing and is the very embodiment of the programming pop culture that Alan Kay has warned about.

agumonkey 11y ago
Moving fast is valuable sometimes, as much as going away in a hammock as Hickey would say. Learning how to alternate both scales is missing though. And I often thought smart people had that down, they could think ideals, then get down through the stack to effectively make things, then get back to the abstraction without losing focus or getting lost. Quite often I'm stuck at one level or the other. > This is one of the reasons why I mostly scoff at attempts to make computer programming a compulsory schooling subject. Coding as "the new literacy" devalues computing and is the very embodiment of the programming pop culture that Alan Kay has warned about. Especially since the people behind this idea have zero idea about what is programming. Some want people to learn HTML, which is pretty much void.
widdershins 11y ago
It's hard to cultivate a good literary culture until you have a large literate and critical audience. Perhaps the same is true for programming culture. I agree with your other points though.

agumonkey 11y ago

Moving fast is valuable sometimes, as much as going away in a hammock as Hickey would say. Learning how to alternate both scales is missing though. And I often thought smart people had that down, they could think ideals, then get down through the stack to effectively make things, then get back to the abstraction without losing focus or getting lost. Quite often I'm stuck at one level or the other. > This is one of the reasons why I mostly scoff at attempts to make computer programming a compulsory schooling subject. Coding as "the new literacy" devalues computing and is the very embodiment of the programming pop culture that Alan Kay has warned about. Especially since the people behind this idea have zero idea about what is programming. Some want people to learn HTML, which is pretty much void.

widdershins 11y ago

It's hard to cultivate a good literary culture until you have a large literate and critical audience. Perhaps the same is true for programming culture. I agree with your other points though.