4 ms·

For starters, you do realize that the author/troll of the article is Zed Shaw right? The fact that you can read a piece of code doesn't mean that you understan

by sp4rki 14y ago

For starters, you do realize that the author/troll of the article is Zed Shaw right? The fact that you can read a piece of code doesn't mean that you understand it. The whole point of teaching how to program is to actually get the student to learn what is actually going on, not just get them to a point where they can give a half assed explanation that really doesn't teach a thing. Repeating the line of code with extra words to convey meaning most certainly does not make it a valid explanation. And then you come along with a list of "responses" to the concepts outlined in the article, out of which you don't even actually understand half of, and completely destroy your initial argument because of it. You complain that Zed is a troll because you can actually read the code easily, when the whole topic of his is actually wether you can understand it. It's a completely different game. You basically just proved Zed right. The problem with teaching .each first according to Zed is that since you don't understand even half of what is going on, you just do things blindly because you've grown to predict the behavior you expect from a specific piece of code. For dessert I'm gonna "troll" a little bit. 1) If I should know variables, arrays, function calls, blocks passed to function calls (which includes an arbitrary comment about BASIC and goto statements), and scope, before I start coding then how the hell am I supposed to learn those very basic concepts? I mean according to you I shouldn't be coding right? 2) If you really don't grasp the concepts you say you don't understand in the list, you probably don't program for a living and/or have not had to actually teach any programming concepts besides the very basics. If this is the case, I'd argue that you still have a long way to go before actually having the experience to compare both "teaching orders" being compared here. 3) You give me the impression of a guy that has only done a bunch of jQuery and perhaps a Rails tutorial or two... AMIRITE? I'm sorry if this comes off like a lengthy angry diatribe (rest assured it's not my intention), but you tried to sound knowledgeable and ended up putting your own foot in your mouth. My mother once told me to only open my mouth if I know what I'm talking about. That my friend is my advice for you.

pacala 14y ago
> The fact that you can read a piece of code doesn't mean that you understand it. Therein lies the troll. Understanding is not figuring out how to derive the code from first principles. If that were true, you shouldn't drive a car because you can't explain the carburator mix ratio on top of your head. Understanding means being able to copy a pattern and adapt it to a new situation. I never wrote a line of Ruby in my life, but I can take the quoted example and tweak it to do something else without ever worrying what mixins are supposed to mean within the Ruby landscape. Proof: arr = [1, 2, 3] sum = 0 arr.each { |elem| sum += elem } puts sum 6 http://codepad.org/x5roEPvS http://codepad.org/x5roEPvS Isn't it nice that I just invented reduce semantics out of something that ostensibly is only a map?
- sp4rki 14y ago
  Understanding how to drive vs building a car is the same thing as understanding how to use a program vs building the program. Once again the point is that if you want to learn how to program in a specific language, you need to understand it's concepts and patterns. It's akin to the fact that if you want to learn how to build a car, you need to understand it's mechanics. You can easily take whatever you find in the internet and build a program. Or you could tweak an example to do something else without another care in the world. Guess what? You still don't understand what's happening or why, and because of that the end product will most probably be defective in some way. You still don't know what the point is, you only know that it works. That's OK if you need a quick solution for a small problem, but it's not when your goal in itself is to learn how to program (in Ruby)... Go ahead and read Zed's article again, only this time do so slowly and with care. Come back and realize two very important things you seem to be missing: A) This is Zed's opinion about TEACHING a programming language. TEACHING being the keyword. If you want to learn a programming language, you inherently need to understand it. As a small aside, he did write "Learn Python The Hard Way" which was pretty much a success, but don't believe me... he's probably a troll as you say. B) The discussion is basically that a form of writing a specific block of code is easier to explain than another, although the latter is more widely used and considered the correct. Readability, though important, has little to do with choosing the correct construct to teach as to provide a good balance of the time and effort you need to put into learning. You want to keep going with the analogies? You shouldn't drive a manual transmission car if you've only driven automatics, the same way you shouldn't deploy code to your clients that you've figured out will give you the results you want when you've never understood what the program is doing on the first place because you made assumptions when you started.
  - judofyr 14y ago
    > Once again the point is that if you want to learn how to program in a specific language, you need to understand it's concepts and patterns. And it's perfectly fine to initally learn that `.each { |name| … }` as a concept for looping over something. > That's OK if you need a quick solution for a small problem, but it's not when your goal in itself is to learn how to program (in Ruby)... I'm not sure what kind of new beginners you have taught (or how you learned yourself), but I always find that new beginners rarely know the whole picture anyway. There's nothing wrong with learning techniques without knowing how they work. In fact, we do it all the time: I wouldn't explain metaclasses when teaching about class methods in Ruby (although they are just an example of methods on the metaclass). I learned basic rules of derivates and how you could use them before I learnt why the rules are true; which am I very thankful for as I wouldn't even get why you would muck around with "limit approaches zero". > If you want to learn a programming language, you inherently need to understand it. No, if you want to know a programming language, you inherently need to understand it. If you want to learn it you can either do it from top-down (learn about specific code, then learn how they understand), bottom-up (learn about basic concepts, then combine them to real programs) or anything in between. I'm mentioning this as someone who learnt programming top-down and spent years without really understanding anything. But I had fun! I created stuff! It would be a sad world if you had to understand everything before you were "allowed" to use it. > The discussion is basically that a form of writing a specific block of code is easier to explain than another, although the latter is more widely used and considered the correct. Readability, though important, has little to do with choosing the correct construct to teach as to provide a good balance of the time and effort you need to put into learning. Remember that the user has to learn blocks anyway. It's not like blocks is an advanced feature that is only used in looping; it's everywhere in Ruby! The real comparison here is "teach for, teach blocks later" or "teach #each, teach rest of blocks later".

by sp4rki 14y ago

pacala 14y ago

> The fact that you can read a piece of code doesn't mean that you understand it. Therein lies the troll. Understanding is not figuring out how to derive the code from first principles. If that were true, you shouldn't drive a car because you can't explain the carburator mix ratio on top of your head. Understanding means being able to copy a pattern and adapt it to a new situation. I never wrote a line of Ruby in my life, but I can take the quoted example and tweak it to do something else without ever worrying what mixins are supposed to mean within the Ruby landscape. Proof: arr = [1, 2, 3] sum = 0 arr.each { |elem| sum += elem } puts sum 6 http://codepad.org/x5roEPvS http://codepad.org/x5roEPvS Isn't it nice that I just invented reduce semantics out of something that ostensibly is only a map?

sp4rki 14y ago
Understanding how to drive vs building a car is the same thing as understanding how to use a program vs building the program. Once again the point is that if you want to learn how to program in a specific language, you need to understand it's concepts and patterns. It's akin to the fact that if you want to learn how to build a car, you need to understand it's mechanics. You can easily take whatever you find in the internet and build a program. Or you could tweak an example to do something else without another care in the world. Guess what? You still don't understand what's happening or why, and because of that the end product will most probably be defective in some way. You still don't know what the point is, you only know that it works. That's OK if you need a quick solution for a small problem, but it's not when your goal in itself is to learn how to program (in Ruby)... Go ahead and read Zed's article again, only this time do so slowly and with care. Come back and realize two very important things you seem to be missing: A) This is Zed's opinion about TEACHING a programming language. TEACHING being the keyword. If you want to learn a programming language, you inherently need to understand it. As a small aside, he did write "Learn Python The Hard Way" which was pretty much a success, but don't believe me... he's probably a troll as you say. B) The discussion is basically that a form of writing a specific block of code is easier to explain than another, although the latter is more widely used and considered the correct. Readability, though important, has little to do with choosing the correct construct to teach as to provide a good balance of the time and effort you need to put into learning. You want to keep going with the analogies? You shouldn't drive a manual transmission car if you've only driven automatics, the same way you shouldn't deploy code to your clients that you've figured out will give you the results you want when you've never understood what the program is doing on the first place because you made assumptions when you started.
- judofyr 14y ago
  > Once again the point is that if you want to learn how to program in a specific language, you need to understand it's concepts and patterns. And it's perfectly fine to initally learn that `.each { |name| … }` as a concept for looping over something. > That's OK if you need a quick solution for a small problem, but it's not when your goal in itself is to learn how to program (in Ruby)... I'm not sure what kind of new beginners you have taught (or how you learned yourself), but I always find that new beginners rarely know the whole picture anyway. There's nothing wrong with learning techniques without knowing how they work. In fact, we do it all the time: I wouldn't explain metaclasses when teaching about class methods in Ruby (although they are just an example of methods on the metaclass). I learned basic rules of derivates and how you could use them before I learnt why the rules are true; which am I very thankful for as I wouldn't even get why you would muck around with "limit approaches zero". > If you want to learn a programming language, you inherently need to understand it. No, if you want to know a programming language, you inherently need to understand it. If you want to learn it you can either do it from top-down (learn about specific code, then learn how they understand), bottom-up (learn about basic concepts, then combine them to real programs) or anything in between. I'm mentioning this as someone who learnt programming top-down and spent years without really understanding anything. But I had fun! I created stuff! It would be a sad world if you had to understand everything before you were "allowed" to use it. > The discussion is basically that a form of writing a specific block of code is easier to explain than another, although the latter is more widely used and considered the correct. Readability, though important, has little to do with choosing the correct construct to teach as to provide a good balance of the time and effort you need to put into learning. Remember that the user has to learn blocks anyway. It's not like blocks is an advanced feature that is only used in looping; it's everywhere in Ruby! The real comparison here is "teach for, teach blocks later" or "teach #each, teach rest of blocks later".