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Algebra is simple. It conforms to a small set of rules that are easily understood, often intuitive, and have few special cases. Problems are small, self-contain
by nknight 15y ago
Algebra is simple. It conforms to a small set of rules that are easily understood, often intuitive, and have few special cases. Problems are small, self-contained, and have clearly-defined parameters. They don't suddenly change on you halfway through the test, they don't have to account for unexpected input, and they don't have to interact with other problems.
Real-world computer programs exist in a large set of arbitrary, often unintuitive rules that are both absolute and malleable, and change between languages and platforms. They have complicated requirements that seek to solve real-world problems that are often ill-defined. They have to cope with unexpected input, hostile input. They are large, comprising hundreds, thousands, even millions of lines of code. They have a multitude of paths that a given piece of input might take, they display emergence.
Coding is not just a simple math problem. It requires clear, detailed reasoning about complex systems operating within arbitrary sets of rules and an unpredictable world.
Related questions might be "Why do people have trouble doing their taxes by hand?" and "Why do people have such a poor understanding of the legal system?". Also, chess.
- mseebach 15y agoAlgebra is as simple as the syntax of a programming language. Applying programming to solve real world problems is as hard as applying algebra to solve real world problems - and there is also only a very small group of people able to do the latter effectively.
- mechanical_fish 15y agoThe syntax of a programming language is actually simpler than algebra. Algebra is not particularly intuitive. And, indeed, that's part of the problem. You really can't claim to be teaching anything of value if all you teach is programming-language syntax. One has to teach people to write some kind of actual program. And that's like teaching prose writing, except that schools and teachers have spent literally thousands of years learning to teach prose writing whereas programming was invented in living memory.