I think it's a profound fear of ambiguity that drives these behaviors: the urge is to move past the 'understanding' part by finding some single interpretation a

I think it's a profound fear of ambiguity that drives these behaviors: the urge is to move past the 'understanding' part by finding some single interpretation and then move on to the 'doing' part, which is the satisfying part. I think formally writing down the specification for any kind of work starts with holding all the ambiguities in of it in your head. In this case, the approach depends on whether the student is more interested in 'computer programming' or 'software engineering'