This reminds me of an experiment my music teacher did with my class in grade school. I'd completely forgot about it until just now, and thinking back, it may ha

This reminds me of an experiment my music teacher did with my class in grade school. I'd completely forgot about it until just now, and thinking back, it may have been one of the things that influenced me to become a programmer. He was trying to teach us the idea of explaining yourself more clearly (he was one of those teachers that went off on tangents totally unrelated to music when he felt there was an important life-lesson other classes might not cover). He stood at the board and told us that he would draw whatever we said, and the goal was to have him write out a musical staff and certain notes on the chalkboard with no physical gestures, just talking. As if we were having a conversation over the phone. He went around the room giving every child a turn at a time. So it starts off "Ok, draw 5 lines." And he gets a piece of paper and drew 5 horizontal lines. "No! No! On the board!", said the next one. So he goes to the chalkboard and draws 5 lines in random places. "No! No! make them horizontal!" And he drew 5 horizontal lines that squiggled around and were of random lengths. And this went on and on until you we ended up with something like "On the chalkboard draw 5 straight horizontal lines, about 1 inch apart, and all 2 feet long." And then we still had to figure out how to explain drawing in notes on the correct line, whether the circle was filled or un-filled (quarter note, half note, etc). We never actually finished, most of the kids got too bored. But I thought that was such a fun lesson. Almost 15 years later I can still recall it as clearly as if it were last week. I've had a few intro programming or algorithms teachers explain a similar concept. A robot baking cakes is a common one, or that programmer joke ("buy butter and if they have eggs then buy a dozen."), but actually shouting commands someone as inept as a computer really made it sink in.