The student picking up indentation 'automatically' is a great example of pain being an extremely useful teacher. The pain of getting lost in one's own code lea

The student picking up indentation 'automatically' is a great example of pain being an extremely useful teacher. The pain of getting lost in one's own code leads to a desire to become more organized. Programming a system adheres to an oral history tradition, where the First generation has suffered the pain of some attribute (henceforth X) of their system. So they build a certain path around it. The second generation (like the student in the article) is told why attribute X is avoided as a rule, however without the first-hand experience of the pain from attribute X's characteristics meaning is lost. Finally the third generation is told to avoid X, and can't really explain why anymore.