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> He's still missing the point. If you read him carefully I think you will find that isn't the case. Much of a professional programmer's time is spent mindless
by jhuni 14y ago
> He's still missing the point.
If you read him carefully I think you will find that isn't the case. Much of a professional programmer's time is spent mindlessly debugging crapware, in other words, code plumbing. Plumbing is a separate speciality for good reason. In depth plumbing courses such as those at toiletacademy should not be required of all students.
On the other hand, I certainly agree that everyone should be taught mathematical thinking. Nearly everybody in the first world is already taught elementary mathematics. That is certainly not something Jeff Atwood is opposing here.
> Their world is comprised of apps and silos.
Programmer's worlds are comprised of apps and silos just as much as everyone elses. Indeed, everyone who is a victim of the UNIX pestilence lives in a world of incompatible competing applications.
> They don't realise that their e-reader is a general purpose computing device capable of more than just downloading books from that one store they bought it from.
That is because most modern e-readers are deliberately designed to be that way. Their manufacturers intentionally implement C.R.A.P (content restriction & punishment) to prevent users from realising the full power of their devices.
- danso 14y agoSo what? Much of a professional writer's time is spent wrangling with arcane grammatical and thematic constructs which 99% of the literate populace forgot about after high school...but it's still important to spend years teaching people how to read or write. Everyone (in middle America) gets through at least hih school algebra...but why is mathematical and logical thinking, common to programmers, so rare? Even in the sciences it's considered a specialty to be able to aggregate data and external information, or to delimit one's own data output in a way that's useful beyond a narrative paper. I think it may just be the case that it's nigh impossible to gain these logical/abstract insights without the practical experience of simple coding. I've tried teaching many people the difference between "8" and (the literal value) 8...it never seems to stick until you write and run a simple piece of code to test it out.
- adeelk 14y ago> why is mathematical and logical thinking, common to programmers, so rare? What evidence is there that programmers have better mathematical and logical thinking? > I've tried teaching many people the difference between "8" and (the literal value) 8...it never seems to stick until you write and run a simple piece of code to test it out. This is unrelated to both mathematics and logic.