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I couldn't help but read this and think about all the "coding" initiatives I've seen in K-12 and shake my head. What Norvig is doing is what we should be teach

I couldn't help but read this and think about all the "coding" initiatives I've seen in K-12 and shake my head. What Norvig is doing is what we should be teaching. He is tackling this seemingly REALLY hard problem by thinking about it methodically, translating some intuition into code, carefully constructing an argument about how to solve it, and ways that it could be extended. This is what actual engineers look like. Everything I've seen around "coding" though has become a masochistic exercise in teaching kids random syntax details and then calling them Coders and Geniuses and Computer Scientists when they successfully copy what the teacher showed them. When you read Norvig's code (big fan of his Sudoku one as well), you realize how the actual "code" is secondary in the sense that what it is really doing is expressing an idea. A very nunanced, elegant idea, but ultimately the product of doing some hard thinking and exploration on a problem domain. If we taught kids to just think about problems in this way, ohh what a world it would be!

mack73 10y ago
But what you should realize is that the person who wrote this beautiful piece of code is someone who is at the peak of their career, a thinker, an artist, and that it must be ok to not ever rise to his level, because this is close to a master-piece. Few of these geniuses become professors, is just a guess, because no matter how quirky you are you always get a job somewhere.
- kragen 10y ago
  I think Norvig's actually improved substantially since he wrote this — he wasn't at the peak of his career! But yes, it's a masterpiece, and yes, it's okay to not ever rise to that level, because even if nothing you ever create is as worthwhile as this, it's still worthwhile. Hacking is fun! And sometimes very useful, too. (Also note that, despite appearances, this isn't the work of one man. Norvig didn't design Python and didn't invent the tabling technique for speeding up search; and Darius found a couple of bugs in the code. That doesn't mean it's not an authentic Norvig masterpiece.)
  - mack73 10y ago
    Sir, btw, I need a rule that I can use intuitively when deciding on wether to concatenate two words and when to put a dash between them. Do you have one?
    - kragen 10y ago
      Sir, it depends entirely on how widely used the compound word in question is. Hyphenated compounds that become sufficiently familiar lose their hyphen.
danso 10y ago
I agree that what Norvig demonstrates here and in all of his notebooks is an ideal of how we use programming to explore (nevermind implement) concepts. But how do we get there without teaching people how to program, including syntax? I think everyone agrees that kids should be able to understand the themes of "A Modest Proposal" and perhaps even write with such depth, but they have to learn their ABCs and be compelled to write about what they ate for breakfast and other insignificant topics before they get to an adequate level. I wish I could say that in my time of teaching, I've met people who could just get these things without actually writing code. But I think for most non-geniuses, including myself, it's all too abstract until you know how to concretely write code yourself.
- ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
  Ohh I completely agree with you. But what I was mostly reacting to is the idea that the way to propel these kids into the 21st century is to simply teach them some basic coding syntax and leave it at that. Even the new AP CS curriculum seems to take a step back from "hard cs" by adding lots of content not directly related to solving cs problems. All that I really meant is that the true value in coding comes in using it to express solutions to problems, whereas teachers and schools that I've seen try to implement "coding" seem to think that if these kids just memorize syntax they have some great advantage in life. I'll give you a perfect example. I was asked to evaluate this Scratch course for middle schoolers just as they were about to present their final projects. One of the kids did a basic pong-like game with human-controlled characters. The ball would move all over the place, seemingly randomly. The game didn't seem to make any sense to the kids who played it. But, the administration felt that this was an incredible success. I later learned that he had produced the game by mostly following along a step-by-step tutorial introduced in class. And I also learned that the reason the ball moved erratically was that the kid had absolutely no concept of how to deal with the angles, much less identify what portion of the character the ball had struck! To me, THAT would have been the real learning! What an opportunity to have taken that kid outside and kick a soccer ball (this was in Brazil) outside and explore some intuition about how it rebounded on the wall; what a chance to see if he could not come up with a way to grok a solution to figuring out to detect where in the character the ball had hit since this didn't come out-of-the-box in Scratch. In other words, I don't mind that they learn the syntax. But there's a reason why firms outsource a lot of "coding" to South Asian countries for pennies on the dollar. Knowing the syntax is cheap. Stimulating kids to think about problems, developing a routine and passion about solving them, that's where the real pot of gold is.
zerooneinfinity 10y ago
It's funny, I was given this as a lab assignment around when the article came out. In fact, we were shown the article. We had an hour, maybe two, for the lab and had to re-implement it in C++. At this point I already had 3-4 years of experience with C++ but found the task ABSOLUTELY daunting. Looking at it now it seems simple, but I'll never forget trying to figure out how this works for the first time with the two hours I was given. Even if a solution is simple, understanding it can be hard, especially if it seems like it should be hard.
drc0 10y ago
I agree, you could learn so much just looking at how he defines functions.. see this for example: def pdist(counter): "Make a probability distribution, given evidence from a Counter." N = sum(counter.values()) return lambda x: counter[x]/N P = pdist(COUNTS) from http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/How%20to%20Do%20Things%20with%20Words.ipynb#%284%29-Theory:-From-Counts-to-Probabilities-of-Word-Sequences http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/How%20to%...
drauh 10y ago
By that reasoning, we should not teach kids how to spell, or about punctuation, and just aim for them writing essays/stories/novels.
- ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
  The commenter right above you expressed the same issue, and I wrote a longer reply there. But it's not that I don't think syntax is important, but I don't think we should pretend that the value in learning to code is learning the syntax. What I'm reacting to is "coding" programs that seem to eradicate any semblance of forcing kids to confront hard problems in favor of presenting them with trivial exercises for the sole purpose s of claiming "they can code."
- xapata 10y ago
  That's how I wish foreign language were taught. I don't care about punctuation. I just want to communicate without embarrassing myself.
  - taneq 10y ago
    My sister once told me that learning a (human) language seems boring until you want to know what that cute boy is saying.
    - xapata 10y ago
      That's basically how I learned French.
- D-Coder 10y ago
  That does turn out to be more effective in teaching them to write coherently. Spelling and punctuation details can come later. If the kids start out being wrong all the time, they just quit.
- shanusmagnus 10y ago
  "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."
sn9 10y ago
The resources are out there. It's more an issue of educators and policy-makers either not knowing they exist or not knowing that's what they need. I'm thinking of books like Think Python and How to Design Programs.
- ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
  HtDP is fantastic. I taught an after-school class with it and it went really well.
emmelaich 10y ago
Yes, my son's High School Software Course has a lot of old dusty design content (data flow diagrams), chunks of soft content - "social impact of computers". And the actual coding is a Visual Basic forms and a bit of html/javascript. Very little in the way of what I would call proper coding: data structures, algorithms.

mack73 10y ago

But what you should realize is that the person who wrote this beautiful piece of code is someone who is at the peak of their career, a thinker, an artist, and that it must be ok to not ever rise to his level, because this is close to a master-piece. Few of these geniuses become professors, is just a guess, because no matter how quirky you are you always get a job somewhere.

kragen 10y ago
I think Norvig's actually improved substantially since he wrote this — he wasn't at the peak of his career! But yes, it's a masterpiece, and yes, it's okay to not ever rise to that level, because even if nothing you ever create is as worthwhile as this, it's still worthwhile. Hacking is fun! And sometimes very useful, too. (Also note that, despite appearances, this isn't the work of one man. Norvig didn't design Python and didn't invent the tabling technique for speeding up search; and Darius found a couple of bugs in the code. That doesn't mean it's not an authentic Norvig masterpiece.)
- mack73 10y ago
  Sir, btw, I need a rule that I can use intuitively when deciding on wether to concatenate two words and when to put a dash between them. Do you have one?
  - kragen 10y ago
    Sir, it depends entirely on how widely used the compound word in question is. Hyphenated compounds that become sufficiently familiar lose their hyphen.

danso 10y ago

I agree that what Norvig demonstrates here and in all of his notebooks is an ideal of how we use programming to explore (nevermind implement) concepts. But how do we get there without teaching people how to program, including syntax? I think everyone agrees that kids should be able to understand the themes of "A Modest Proposal" and perhaps even write with such depth, but they have to learn their ABCs and be compelled to write about what they ate for breakfast and other insignificant topics before they get to an adequate level. I wish I could say that in my time of teaching, I've met people who could just get these things without actually writing code. But I think for most non-geniuses, including myself, it's all too abstract until you know how to concretely write code yourself.

ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
Ohh I completely agree with you. But what I was mostly reacting to is the idea that the way to propel these kids into the 21st century is to simply teach them some basic coding syntax and leave it at that. Even the new AP CS curriculum seems to take a step back from "hard cs" by adding lots of content not directly related to solving cs problems. All that I really meant is that the true value in coding comes in using it to express solutions to problems, whereas teachers and schools that I've seen try to implement "coding" seem to think that if these kids just memorize syntax they have some great advantage in life. I'll give you a perfect example. I was asked to evaluate this Scratch course for middle schoolers just as they were about to present their final projects. One of the kids did a basic pong-like game with human-controlled characters. The ball would move all over the place, seemingly randomly. The game didn't seem to make any sense to the kids who played it. But, the administration felt that this was an incredible success. I later learned that he had produced the game by mostly following along a step-by-step tutorial introduced in class. And I also learned that the reason the ball moved erratically was that the kid had absolutely no concept of how to deal with the angles, much less identify what portion of the character the ball had struck! To me, THAT would have been the real learning! What an opportunity to have taken that kid outside and kick a soccer ball (this was in Brazil) outside and explore some intuition about how it rebounded on the wall; what a chance to see if he could not come up with a way to grok a solution to figuring out to detect where in the character the ball had hit since this didn't come out-of-the-box in Scratch. In other words, I don't mind that they learn the syntax. But there's a reason why firms outsource a lot of "coding" to South Asian countries for pennies on the dollar. Knowing the syntax is cheap. Stimulating kids to think about problems, developing a routine and passion about solving them, that's where the real pot of gold is.

zerooneinfinity 10y ago

It's funny, I was given this as a lab assignment around when the article came out. In fact, we were shown the article. We had an hour, maybe two, for the lab and had to re-implement it in C++. At this point I already had 3-4 years of experience with C++ but found the task ABSOLUTELY daunting. Looking at it now it seems simple, but I'll never forget trying to figure out how this works for the first time with the two hours I was given. Even if a solution is simple, understanding it can be hard, especially if it seems like it should be hard.

drc0 10y ago

I agree, you could learn so much just looking at how he defines functions.. see this for example: def pdist(counter): "Make a probability distribution, given evidence from a Counter." N = sum(counter.values()) return lambda x: counter[x]/N P = pdist(COUNTS) from http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/How%20to%20Do%20Things%20with%20Words.ipynb#%284%29-Theory:-From-Counts-to-Probabilities-of-Word-Sequences http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/How%20to%...

drauh 10y ago

By that reasoning, we should not teach kids how to spell, or about punctuation, and just aim for them writing essays/stories/novels.

ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
The commenter right above you expressed the same issue, and I wrote a longer reply there. But it's not that I don't think syntax is important, but I don't think we should pretend that the value in learning to code is learning the syntax. What I'm reacting to is "coding" programs that seem to eradicate any semblance of forcing kids to confront hard problems in favor of presenting them with trivial exercises for the sole purpose s of claiming "they can code."
xapata 10y ago
That's how I wish foreign language were taught. I don't care about punctuation. I just want to communicate without embarrassing myself.
- taneq 10y ago
  My sister once told me that learning a (human) language seems boring until you want to know what that cute boy is saying.
  - xapata 10y ago
    That's basically how I learned French.
D-Coder 10y ago
That does turn out to be more effective in teaching them to write coherently. Spelling and punctuation details can come later. If the kids start out being wrong all the time, they just quit.
shanusmagnus 10y ago
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

sn9 10y ago

The resources are out there. It's more an issue of educators and policy-makers either not knowing they exist or not knowing that's what they need. I'm thinking of books like Think Python and How to Design Programs.

ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
HtDP is fantastic. I taught an after-school class with it and it went really well.

emmelaich 10y ago

Yes, my son's High School Software Course has a lot of old dusty design content (data flow diagrams), chunks of soft content - "social impact of computers". And the actual coding is a Visual Basic forms and a bit of html/javascript. Very little in the way of what I would call proper coding: data structures, algorithms.