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Thank you for articulating this so crisply. I realize that I have the same idea as well that "most people can't". Where did we get this idea come from? I'm gen

by kabuks 15y ago

Thank you for articulating this so crisply. I realize that I have the same idea as well that "most people can't". Where did we get this idea come from? I'm genuinely curious. I've recently taken a huge bet in the opposite direction of this assumption that not everybody can learn coding, and I'm very interested in what (if any) evidence exists on both sides of the argument.

mbeswetherick 15y ago
This paper doesn't necessarily answer why people can't program, it just points out some pretty interesting discoveries. http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/reges/mystery/mystery.pdf http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/reges/mystery/mystery.pdf It's a paper that focuses on some strange patterns that came out of a statistical analysis of the 1988 Computer Science AP test. It turns out that there are a few questions that end up being a great indicator towards someone's natural programming ability. Definitely worth the read.
- kabuks 15y ago
  Great article. Thanks. This in particular blew my mind: "“Educators of computer science have repeatedly observed that only about 2 out of every 100 students enrolling in introductory programming classes really resonate with the subject and seem to be natural-born computer scientists…I conclude that roughly 2% of all people ‘think algorithmically,’ in the sense that they can reason rapidly about algorithmic processes."
  - justincormack 15y ago
    But that is a quote from Knuth based on an older unpublished study, and seems to be a conjecture with weak evidence. Not sure it is actually mind blowing.
aarlo 15y ago
I got it from thinking about it a lot, also reading Carl Jung... Is dev bootcamp new? Looks cool!
- kabuks 15y ago
  It is. Thanks. It was born out of this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3267133 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3267133 There are 20 willing students signed up to be experimented on in the spring. I'll definitely keep folks here posted on the results. What does Jung have to do with this?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

by kabuks 15y ago

mbeswetherick 15y ago

This paper doesn't necessarily answer why people can't program, it just points out some pretty interesting discoveries. http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/reges/mystery/mystery.pdf http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/reges/mystery/mystery.pdf It's a paper that focuses on some strange patterns that came out of a statistical analysis of the 1988 Computer Science AP test. It turns out that there are a few questions that end up being a great indicator towards someone's natural programming ability. Definitely worth the read.

kabuks 15y ago
Great article. Thanks. This in particular blew my mind: "“Educators of computer science have repeatedly observed that only about 2 out of every 100 students enrolling in introductory programming classes really resonate with the subject and seem to be natural-born computer scientists…I conclude that roughly 2% of all people ‘think algorithmically,’ in the sense that they can reason rapidly about algorithmic processes."
- justincormack 15y ago
  But that is a quote from Knuth based on an older unpublished study, and seems to be a conjecture with weak evidence. Not sure it is actually mind blowing.

aarlo 15y ago

I got it from thinking about it a lot, also reading Carl Jung... Is dev bootcamp new? Looks cool!

kabuks 15y ago
It is. Thanks. It was born out of this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3267133 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3267133 There are 20 willing students signed up to be experimented on in the spring. I'll definitely keep folks here posted on the results. What does Jung have to do with this?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]