8 ms·

I see this largely as a failure of education. You see this issue in many areas and much earlier on like teaching mathematics. In schools there tends to be one m

by cletus 15y ago

I see this largely as a failure of education. You see this issue in many areas and much earlier on like teaching mathematics. In schools there tends to be one method used and that method doesn't suit everybody. I see this at work. I've known programmers who, when they get a new hire, will basically let them flounder. I guess the basic idea is that if you're "good" you'll "figure it out" (with minimal time investment to boot). And that will work with some people. My own philosophy is that there are a significant number of people who need direction. Don't overwhelm them with "everything". Give them small, structured tasks to learn processes, small parts of the system, build confidence and give some measure of progress. That all being said, I honestly don't know how I learnt to program at all. I can teach people who know how to program (the basics) more. But I can't teach someone who doesn't know how to program how to program. I've come around to thinking that Zed Shaw (as just one example) is right about this. With his "Learn X the Hard Way" books he starts out by basically saying "just type this in" (and don't copy and paste). Don't worry what it does. You'll figure that out later. I see people (in many different areas) who are under the mistaken impression they need to know "everything" before they can do anything (or even in games, make a decision of any kind). They feel the need to weigh up all the options and consider all the consequences. That's not actually how people learn (IMHO). Children don't know any better so can just learn this way. Adults often let self-doubt, fear of embarrassment or fear of "what might happen" get in the way such that they won't allow themselves to learn. So perhaps what universities should do is separate students who already know how to program from those that don't. Those that don't don't take ANY theory at all until they do an introductory course that starts with "just type this in". If you lack the ability (and willingness) to turn a thought into a program, no matter how simple, you're doomed to failure. This, I believe, is something that can be taught. The ability to just try stuff and see what happens in a key element in continual learning (IMHO) and something that needs to be ingrained in programmers (to be) from day one. I'd really love to see the outcome of this approach versus more traditional approaches.

zedshaw 15y ago
> I see this largely as a failure of education. You see this issue in many areas and much earlier on like teaching mathematics. In schools there tends to be one method used and that method doesn't suit everybody. I've found that education, at least K-12, is slowly shifting attitudes from 'Why are students so dumb?' to 'How can we teach this better?' Computer Science is notoriously bad at believing the former over the latter, and papers like this are demonstrations of this.
- dpritchett 15y ago
  It would be a lot easier to teach CS to 18 year olds if they had stronger foundations in algebra, logic, and abstractions. When "teach a bunch of freshmen to program" is your mission statement then it's perfectly understandable to prefer the students with solid fundamentals.
  - makmanalp 15y ago
    No, it's not. Sorry to be blunt, but it seems colleges want more and more of their students. Already know how to program and have several jobs under your belt to prove it? Step right in, of course we'll accept you over the schmuck who wasted his high school drawing or playing music. It angers me that what is primarily an educational institution insists on having their students pre-educated. You'd ideally want your students to have solid fundamentals, yes. But the reality is that most of them don't, and casting away those kids is the easy way out. I listened to a talk by a dean of one of the best technical schools in Turkey, and he said, "we spend your first year erasing all the junk put into your brain in highschool, and re-teach you the fundamentals". I think this is the better way.
    - Groxx 15y ago
      That sounds a lot like General Education requirements in college in the US. You can avoid taking many of them if you test well enough, but otherwise they're pretty much bringing everyone up to a highschool level, because some didn't take that class or simply don't remember it well enough.
  - veidr 15y ago
    Stated another way, it's perfectly understandable that a large percentage of incoming undergrad students can't program at all, when their education up to that point has failed to introduce them algebra and higher mathematics, logic, or reducing complexity through abstraction.
allenp 15y ago
You make a number of good points but I want to respond to one thing - the failure of education. I think it may not be so much a failure of education as so much the economics of education. The use of a single curriculum reduces complexity and administrative overhead (teacher time) which at the professor level is expensive. If the computer science courses were designed to use multiple methods you could indeed better educate a variety of students but at an increased cost. In my mind the question then is whether or not it is worth the money to educate those that can't succeed with the current teaching method. The entire CS department would need to charge students more per class in order to have more successful students and in order to justify this cost there would need to be a corresponding beneficial pressure for the student to pay those costs (increased demand or higher pay for programmers).
- Zikes 15y ago
  Wouldn't increasing the success rate by 30-60% pay for itself? If that much of the class fails out after the first course, that's tuition lost for the remainder of the courses, is it not?
  - allenp 15y ago
    Possibly, but only if the subsequent classes do not also have the increased staffing costs. I guess my point is that just because this group learns how to assign variables doesn't mean they'll be able to program recursively, understand how a compiler works, or be able to debug the stack and they will need just as much help in those classes as they did at the onset.
  - Symmetry 15y ago
    Not really. STEM professors generally get most of their money through grants, so they don't really care about the tuition that students bring in. Plus, teaching uses up resources (both professor time and grad students) that could be used on research that could bring in more grants. But the students who flunk out of CS or other STEM fields usually don't go away, they end up in the humanities instead. There, professors aren't getting a lot of money based on their research, and they usually have a surplus of grad students that they need to put to use somehow. And the college gets the same tuition either way.
parfe 15y ago
>I see this largely as a failure of education. You see this issue in many areas and much earlier on like teaching mathematics. In schools there tends to be one method used and that method doesn't suit everybody. Good thing professional educators are almost as observant as you in regard to teaching. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=differentiated+instruction http://lmgtfy.com/?q=differentiated+instruction I really love how HN conceit lets people post about entire industries as if those people just have no clue what they are doing. And not only do people here hold those pompous and generally ignorant positions, but other people support them!
- dpritchett 15y ago
  I read cletus's post to suggest that primary math education (i.e. young children) isn't personalized very much. This is demonstrably true, at least in the U.S. A lot of it is budgets and politics. No need to infer that cletus believes he is a more thoughtful educator than people who spend their careers on it.
  - irahul 15y ago
    > This is demonstrably true, at least in the U.S. Demonstrably true here in India as well. True that I can't speak for all of India, or you can't speak for all of US; but I believe I have enough data points for the extrapolation to be valid. I think that's enough to infer we have a problem, and it's largely ignored. > cletus believes he is a more thoughtful educator than people who spend their careers on it. I don't think it matters what cletus thinks. Conceited or not, I see his observations mostly hold in the real world.
  - gioele 15y ago
    > primary math education (i.e. young children) isn't personalized very much. This is demonstrably true, at least in the U.S. I would say that it is demonstrably not true in many EU countries. Maybe "non personalisation" is the tendency of lazy teachers, but I remember pretty well how my math teachers repeated the same subject thrice: the first time describing its core in an abstract way, the second time with concrete examples (apples and pears) and the third time in very little incremental steps. The first explanation was for naturally able math learner, the second for those how needed practical examples and the third for less able pupils. Some of us complained about the fact that it was a boring way to teach (and you know how horrible bored kids can be in the class) but I'd say it was worth it to have all my classmates learning more or less at the same pace with nobody left behind. Actually, I complain more about the fact that we had to change math teachers so many times because of educational reforms and budget cuts/reorganizations.
SkyMarshal 15y ago
Good points. To add a few from my own experience: >I've come around to thinking that Zed Shaw (as just one example) is right about this. With his "Learn X the Hard Way" books he starts out by basically saying "just type this in" (and don't copy and paste). Don't worry what it does. You'll figure that out later. That's basically the 10,000hr approach - the earlier you start programming, even at Zed's most basic level, the earler you start rewiring your neurons to do it more efficiently and effectively. For the natural born programmers in the article's study, this isn't necessary, but for that whole other group aren't natural born, I do believe something like this is very necessary if any of them hope to become effective programmers. It's not impossible for them, as the study implies, but does require taking into account how the mind works (which we know now thanks to modern neuroscience), how it is malleable, and then designing an instructional course around that understanding. Additionally, trying to educate the 'goats', the second group, at the same pace as the 'sheep' is going to fail. It simply takes more effort and more time for their minds to adjust, for things to 'click', for their neural pathways to rewire. Especially when that the thing that is getting rewired is their fundamental need to grok meaning amongst the relatively 'meaningless' rules that programming consists of. They're not a lost cause, but trying to educate them with the same curriculum and pace is. Finally, the programming instruction should, as you imply, be bottom-up exploratory, not top-down memorize-apply-repeat. Part of the problem may also be that people with weaker working memories have a harder time with the academic approach to learning, even project-based ones. One of my favorite pieces of anecdotal evidence for this is from a story Paul Graham linked from 'Beating the Averages' [0]. So, given that it takes significantly more time and effort for the second group, it is all the more imperative that they start earlier, as early in life as possible. As soon as they can read and type, basically. And in order to increase the amount of time per day that such students can spend practicing programming, it may also be worth delaying math education, or integrating it with programming education. Something's gotta give. No more pen and paper math, or even calculator math, if possible, rather learn how construct and solve math problems in code. That may sound extreme, but given where the world is going [1], I think nothing should be off the table when it comes to teaching people, even (especially) the 'goats', to code. Even if they go on to non-programmer jobs, the ability to think both abstractly and concretely simultaneously, and the ability to handle meaninglessness, are both supremely valuable, no matter what you endeavor. 0. http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html 1. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190348090457651...
colmmacc 15y ago
I think you're on to something. When musical students are learning to be accompanists, a very common question is "how do I know what chords to play?" and there's no real answer. There's nothing more than the intuition and taste that evolves after trying many many chords many many times, to different melodies, and it somehow - mysteriously - "clicking" eventually. Eventually you just get to know. Similarly, when learning to be a Jazz soloist, students are encouraged to practice the great solos from Jazz legends of history over and over, by rote - just keep doing it. Eventually an aptitude develops and the student just gets to reach in and feel for why a particular set of notes might be chosen, or a certain ornament here, a pause there. Somehow, this can then develop into their own particular style and personality too, and evolve beyond mere emulation. As musicians progress, they begin to develop higher and higher level abstractions for music; being able to use subtle nuance to relate complicated lines of melody, harmony and counterpoint is one example. Another practical example is how musicians over time develop better models for music itself. There's a natural progression; a novice will struggle to play even a familiar melody on their one instrument, an experienced musician will be able to play it with ease on more than one instrument - even if they have never played it before on that instrument, a master musician will be able to transpose the melody into a different key, rework it, add nuance ... and so on. At the beginning the novice can only model the ordered movement of fingers, but the master is modeling relative pitch changes, fluid timings, potential note substitutions and so on. I find programming to be similar. With a range that goes from being able to type in a hello world program in a procedural language, to higher-orders of thinking required to model concurrent functional systems and have a see that a tiny defmacro might be the best way to re-work a whole piece. There is a progression, and it's intrinsically mysterious how the mental models work, but it's clear that they come with practice. Through this lens, "Talent" might best be thought of as "An innate willfulness for practicing" rather than some genetically encoded aptitude for the task at hand. There are many communities where musical education is essentially mandatory, and near enough to anybody can become a good musician if they are required to practice. Some militaries arbitrarily assign soldiers to pipe regiments, treat it as a learnable task, and make them get on with it - and it works. It may be well worth looking at how music is thought, and seeing if there are any dividends for the educating of programming.
steve8918 15y ago
I completely disagree. I firmly believe that either you are born with the ability to be a programmer or you're not. That's not saying that it's good or bad, but I believe a lot of it is just how your brain is configured. It's as innate as the ability to shoot baskets, or throw a football, or as innate as gaining energy when interacting with people (extrovert) vs losing energy when interacting with people (introvert). Case in point: there are some people who are extremely smart, but don't have the ability to visualize things like a map in their head. I know someone who loves cars, has been into cars since he was a teenager, and loves driving. However, for the life of him, he can't read a map. He's not dumb at all, he's very intelligent and excellent with computers. But he has no ability to visualize things in his head and spin them around. So when he's given instructions on where to go, he needs landmarks, ie. "Turn left at the McDonald's and turn right when you get to the 4th traffic light." He can't process "Go north on Main Street, and then head East along Central Ave." I believe programming is the same way. There's a type of inner mental gymnastics that you need to do in order to program well, because a lot of the things are very cerebral. Some people just can't do it. I'm not saying that they can't be taught how to program to an adequate level, but the fact that it so goes against the mesh of how their thought process works, it just won't be enjoyable to them. They will never be better than adequate. Of course, most of us here probably can't picture that, so many of you might think I'm wrong. But put it in another perspective. We can all be taught to throw a football perfectly. But does that mean we'll be any good at it? Probably not. If we don't have the physical ability to throw a football more than 10-15 yards (like me), will it be fun for us? Probably not. But if you were a football player, hanging out with a bunch of other football players, you wouldn't understand why everyone can't throw a football more than 40 yards. The same goes for Sales. I've come to learn from my friends who are salesmen that the sales cycle is largely algorithmic. So it can be taught. But getting out in front of customers every day, chit-chatting, engaging them, etc, is something that many of us simply aren't built to do. It takes a certain personality type to actually enjoy this. And there are plenty of them that do enjoy this and make vast sums of money. But if I were put in that position, I would hate every second, and would likely get fired. So yes, programming can be taught, but I truly believe that there is an innate mental configuration that determines whether or not you can digest and learn the information and whether you'll be good at it, and more importantly whether or not you'll actually enjoy it.
edanm 15y ago
"Children don't know any better so can just learn this way." This sentence made me think. The image of the brilliant programmer who got his start at the age of 12 has always been, in my mind, proof that some people are born with programming talent and some aren't (not to say they can't develop it). But what if, the only difference is that someone happened to start programming at a young age because he was interested it for some irrelevant reason, and because he was young, he learned it much more easily, in much the same way kids learn languages more easily than adults. An interesting idea. In the real world, people's ability is probably a factor of both these things.

by cletus 15y ago

zedshaw 15y ago

> I see this largely as a failure of education. You see this issue in many areas and much earlier on like teaching mathematics. In schools there tends to be one method used and that method doesn't suit everybody. I've found that education, at least K-12, is slowly shifting attitudes from 'Why are students so dumb?' to 'How can we teach this better?' Computer Science is notoriously bad at believing the former over the latter, and papers like this are demonstrations of this.

dpritchett 15y ago
It would be a lot easier to teach CS to 18 year olds if they had stronger foundations in algebra, logic, and abstractions. When "teach a bunch of freshmen to program" is your mission statement then it's perfectly understandable to prefer the students with solid fundamentals.
- makmanalp 15y ago
  No, it's not. Sorry to be blunt, but it seems colleges want more and more of their students. Already know how to program and have several jobs under your belt to prove it? Step right in, of course we'll accept you over the schmuck who wasted his high school drawing or playing music. It angers me that what is primarily an educational institution insists on having their students pre-educated. You'd ideally want your students to have solid fundamentals, yes. But the reality is that most of them don't, and casting away those kids is the easy way out. I listened to a talk by a dean of one of the best technical schools in Turkey, and he said, "we spend your first year erasing all the junk put into your brain in highschool, and re-teach you the fundamentals". I think this is the better way.
  - Groxx 15y ago
    That sounds a lot like General Education requirements in college in the US. You can avoid taking many of them if you test well enough, but otherwise they're pretty much bringing everyone up to a highschool level, because some didn't take that class or simply don't remember it well enough.
- veidr 15y ago
  Stated another way, it's perfectly understandable that a large percentage of incoming undergrad students can't program at all, when their education up to that point has failed to introduce them algebra and higher mathematics, logic, or reducing complexity through abstraction.

allenp 15y ago

You make a number of good points but I want to respond to one thing - the failure of education. I think it may not be so much a failure of education as so much the economics of education. The use of a single curriculum reduces complexity and administrative overhead (teacher time) which at the professor level is expensive. If the computer science courses were designed to use multiple methods you could indeed better educate a variety of students but at an increased cost. In my mind the question then is whether or not it is worth the money to educate those that can't succeed with the current teaching method. The entire CS department would need to charge students more per class in order to have more successful students and in order to justify this cost there would need to be a corresponding beneficial pressure for the student to pay those costs (increased demand or higher pay for programmers).

Zikes 15y ago
Wouldn't increasing the success rate by 30-60% pay for itself? If that much of the class fails out after the first course, that's tuition lost for the remainder of the courses, is it not?
- allenp 15y ago
  Possibly, but only if the subsequent classes do not also have the increased staffing costs. I guess my point is that just because this group learns how to assign variables doesn't mean they'll be able to program recursively, understand how a compiler works, or be able to debug the stack and they will need just as much help in those classes as they did at the onset.
- Symmetry 15y ago
  Not really. STEM professors generally get most of their money through grants, so they don't really care about the tuition that students bring in. Plus, teaching uses up resources (both professor time and grad students) that could be used on research that could bring in more grants. But the students who flunk out of CS or other STEM fields usually don't go away, they end up in the humanities instead. There, professors aren't getting a lot of money based on their research, and they usually have a surplus of grad students that they need to put to use somehow. And the college gets the same tuition either way.

parfe 15y ago

>I see this largely as a failure of education. You see this issue in many areas and much earlier on like teaching mathematics. In schools there tends to be one method used and that method doesn't suit everybody. Good thing professional educators are almost as observant as you in regard to teaching. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=differentiated+instruction http://lmgtfy.com/?q=differentiated+instruction I really love how HN conceit lets people post about entire industries as if those people just have no clue what they are doing. And not only do people here hold those pompous and generally ignorant positions, but other people support them!

dpritchett 15y ago
I read cletus's post to suggest that primary math education (i.e. young children) isn't personalized very much. This is demonstrably true, at least in the U.S. A lot of it is budgets and politics. No need to infer that cletus believes he is a more thoughtful educator than people who spend their careers on it.
- irahul 15y ago
  > This is demonstrably true, at least in the U.S. Demonstrably true here in India as well. True that I can't speak for all of India, or you can't speak for all of US; but I believe I have enough data points for the extrapolation to be valid. I think that's enough to infer we have a problem, and it's largely ignored. > cletus believes he is a more thoughtful educator than people who spend their careers on it. I don't think it matters what cletus thinks. Conceited or not, I see his observations mostly hold in the real world.
- gioele 15y ago
  > primary math education (i.e. young children) isn't personalized very much. This is demonstrably true, at least in the U.S. I would say that it is demonstrably not true in many EU countries. Maybe "non personalisation" is the tendency of lazy teachers, but I remember pretty well how my math teachers repeated the same subject thrice: the first time describing its core in an abstract way, the second time with concrete examples (apples and pears) and the third time in very little incremental steps. The first explanation was for naturally able math learner, the second for those how needed practical examples and the third for less able pupils. Some of us complained about the fact that it was a boring way to teach (and you know how horrible bored kids can be in the class) but I'd say it was worth it to have all my classmates learning more or less at the same pace with nobody left behind. Actually, I complain more about the fact that we had to change math teachers so many times because of educational reforms and budget cuts/reorganizations.

SkyMarshal 15y ago

Good points. To add a few from my own experience: >I've come around to thinking that Zed Shaw (as just one example) is right about this. With his "Learn X the Hard Way" books he starts out by basically saying "just type this in" (and don't copy and paste). Don't worry what it does. You'll figure that out later. That's basically the 10,000hr approach - the earlier you start programming, even at Zed's most basic level, the earler you start rewiring your neurons to do it more efficiently and effectively. For the natural born programmers in the article's study, this isn't necessary, but for that whole other group aren't natural born, I do believe something like this is very necessary if any of them hope to become effective programmers. It's not impossible for them, as the study implies, but does require taking into account how the mind works (which we know now thanks to modern neuroscience), how it is malleable, and then designing an instructional course around that understanding. Additionally, trying to educate the 'goats', the second group, at the same pace as the 'sheep' is going to fail. It simply takes more effort and more time for their minds to adjust, for things to 'click', for their neural pathways to rewire. Especially when that the thing that is getting rewired is their fundamental need to grok meaning amongst the relatively 'meaningless' rules that programming consists of. They're not a lost cause, but trying to educate them with the same curriculum and pace is. Finally, the programming instruction should, as you imply, be bottom-up exploratory, not top-down memorize-apply-repeat. Part of the problem may also be that people with weaker working memories have a harder time with the academic approach to learning, even project-based ones. One of my favorite pieces of anecdotal evidence for this is from a story Paul Graham linked from 'Beating the Averages' [0]. So, given that it takes significantly more time and effort for the second group, it is all the more imperative that they start earlier, as early in life as possible. As soon as they can read and type, basically. And in order to increase the amount of time per day that such students can spend practicing programming, it may also be worth delaying math education, or integrating it with programming education. Something's gotta give. No more pen and paper math, or even calculator math, if possible, rather learn how construct and solve math problems in code. That may sound extreme, but given where the world is going [1], I think nothing should be off the table when it comes to teaching people, even (especially) the 'goats', to code. Even if they go on to non-programmer jobs, the ability to think both abstractly and concretely simultaneously, and the ability to handle meaninglessness, are both supremely valuable, no matter what you endeavor. 0. http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html 1. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190348090457651...

colmmacc 15y ago

I think you're on to something. When musical students are learning to be accompanists, a very common question is "how do I know what chords to play?" and there's no real answer. There's nothing more than the intuition and taste that evolves after trying many many chords many many times, to different melodies, and it somehow - mysteriously - "clicking" eventually. Eventually you just get to know. Similarly, when learning to be a Jazz soloist, students are encouraged to practice the great solos from Jazz legends of history over and over, by rote - just keep doing it. Eventually an aptitude develops and the student just gets to reach in and feel for why a particular set of notes might be chosen, or a certain ornament here, a pause there. Somehow, this can then develop into their own particular style and personality too, and evolve beyond mere emulation. As musicians progress, they begin to develop higher and higher level abstractions for music; being able to use subtle nuance to relate complicated lines of melody, harmony and counterpoint is one example. Another practical example is how musicians over time develop better models for music itself. There's a natural progression; a novice will struggle to play even a familiar melody on their one instrument, an experienced musician will be able to play it with ease on more than one instrument - even if they have never played it before on that instrument, a master musician will be able to transpose the melody into a different key, rework it, add nuance ... and so on. At the beginning the novice can only model the ordered movement of fingers, but the master is modeling relative pitch changes, fluid timings, potential note substitutions and so on. I find programming to be similar. With a range that goes from being able to type in a hello world program in a procedural language, to higher-orders of thinking required to model concurrent functional systems and have a see that a tiny defmacro might be the best way to re-work a whole piece. There is a progression, and it's intrinsically mysterious how the mental models work, but it's clear that they come with practice. Through this lens, "Talent" might best be thought of as "An innate willfulness for practicing" rather than some genetically encoded aptitude for the task at hand. There are many communities where musical education is essentially mandatory, and near enough to anybody can become a good musician if they are required to practice. Some militaries arbitrarily assign soldiers to pipe regiments, treat it as a learnable task, and make them get on with it - and it works. It may be well worth looking at how music is thought, and seeing if there are any dividends for the educating of programming.

steve8918 15y ago

I completely disagree. I firmly believe that either you are born with the ability to be a programmer or you're not. That's not saying that it's good or bad, but I believe a lot of it is just how your brain is configured. It's as innate as the ability to shoot baskets, or throw a football, or as innate as gaining energy when interacting with people (extrovert) vs losing energy when interacting with people (introvert). Case in point: there are some people who are extremely smart, but don't have the ability to visualize things like a map in their head. I know someone who loves cars, has been into cars since he was a teenager, and loves driving. However, for the life of him, he can't read a map. He's not dumb at all, he's very intelligent and excellent with computers. But he has no ability to visualize things in his head and spin them around. So when he's given instructions on where to go, he needs landmarks, ie. "Turn left at the McDonald's and turn right when you get to the 4th traffic light." He can't process "Go north on Main Street, and then head East along Central Ave." I believe programming is the same way. There's a type of inner mental gymnastics that you need to do in order to program well, because a lot of the things are very cerebral. Some people just can't do it. I'm not saying that they can't be taught how to program to an adequate level, but the fact that it so goes against the mesh of how their thought process works, it just won't be enjoyable to them. They will never be better than adequate. Of course, most of us here probably can't picture that, so many of you might think I'm wrong. But put it in another perspective. We can all be taught to throw a football perfectly. But does that mean we'll be any good at it? Probably not. If we don't have the physical ability to throw a football more than 10-15 yards (like me), will it be fun for us? Probably not. But if you were a football player, hanging out with a bunch of other football players, you wouldn't understand why everyone can't throw a football more than 40 yards. The same goes for Sales. I've come to learn from my friends who are salesmen that the sales cycle is largely algorithmic. So it can be taught. But getting out in front of customers every day, chit-chatting, engaging them, etc, is something that many of us simply aren't built to do. It takes a certain personality type to actually enjoy this. And there are plenty of them that do enjoy this and make vast sums of money. But if I were put in that position, I would hate every second, and would likely get fired. So yes, programming can be taught, but I truly believe that there is an innate mental configuration that determines whether or not you can digest and learn the information and whether you'll be good at it, and more importantly whether or not you'll actually enjoy it.

edanm 15y ago

"Children don't know any better so can just learn this way." This sentence made me think. The image of the brilliant programmer who got his start at the age of 12 has always been, in my mind, proof that some people are born with programming talent and some aren't (not to say they can't develop it). But what if, the only difference is that someone happened to start programming at a young age because he was interested it for some irrelevant reason, and because he was young, he learned it much more easily, in much the same way kids learn languages more easily than adults. An interesting idea. In the real world, people's ability is probably a factor of both these things.