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My freshman year of college, I was working with a person in the introductory programming course. We worked together for hours at a time. I'm, by nature, a very

My freshman year of college, I was working with a person in the introductory programming course. We worked together for hours at a time. I'm, by nature, a very patient person and was willing to let this person work through the problems and figure them out. However, at the end of the course the person was none the wiser about how to program (even basic things). This person changed majors to another engineering discipline and is doing great in that field. It still requires the same engineering-esque reasoning skills. By no means am I the perfect teacher nor does one anecdote make a data set. However, because of that experience, I am very much inclined to believe that there are very smart people that just do not have the inclinations needed to become a programmer.

jacquesm 16y ago
Interesting story, thank you! Were they interested in the work? Was their ambition to get in to programming (was that the major they wanted to go for)? And if so what was their motivation to do so? I've found that fascination with technology helps a great deal here, if you are not typically intrigued by how stuff works and like to puzzle then programming will probably not be the kind of challenge that you take to. I remember when I first learned (or tried to learn) to program. For weeks I was just looking at the book without any progress whatsoever, finally it clicked and when it did it was like 'oh, that's how it works'... After that it came easy (most of the time, at least). But if I had quite in those first few weeks I would have literally gotten nothing out of it but a bunch of frustration. So I would presume that it is possible for people to get stuck in that particular phase for a long time. Maybe it's the programmer equivalent of being 'tone deaf'?