Your point is well-taken, Lindsay: "I think the point is that some people simply don't really want to learn to program so don't bother." The question of what motivates people to learn to program is an open and interesting research question--given the context that this is the Psychology of Programming Interest Group, and that affect is a function of mind as well as cognition. I don't believe that we know much about what motivates people to learn to program: - At the high end: The "Camel" (or "sheep and goats") paper only considers "learn to program" vs. "can't." That former group has different motivations, I believe. What motivates those super-hackers who become obsessed with code and end up inventing something like Linux? What motivates them? - At the low end: CMU's Software Engineering Institute estimates that there are at least two and as many as ten times end-user programmers as there are professional software developers today. What motivates someone to pick up programming without any previous background (and without, presumably, any desire to make it a profession)?
My guess is that these aren't at all the same kind of motivation. In fact, one might argue that the activities that the super-hacker and the end-user programmer are engaging in are dramatically different from each other. Programming at the level of 100 lines or less, vs. 10,000 lines and up is very different. We may be talking about completely different psychologies, considering both affect and cognition. If we agree that motivation is what keeps some people from learning to program, and if we don't know much about motivation and programming, I find it premature to claim that some people can't learn to program. We know too little about the most significant factor. Mark On Sun, 2007-06-24 at 09:45 -0400, Lindsay Marshall wrote: > > > How does one prove that "some people will *never* learn to program"? > All possible approaches > > have now been tried so there are no new innovations to develop? > > > Computer science has only been around for a bit over 50 years. In > evolutionary terms, that's way > > too short a time to evolve a particular "gene" for geekiness -- even > if it could be shown to have some evolutionary advantage. > > I think this is not the issue. Music education has been around for > centuries and there are people who just "never" learn music (and > people have tried many more ways to teach music than they have > programming). I think the point is that some people simply don't > really want to learn to program so don't bother. Most people can learn > most things (up to certain level) if they want to, they just don't > want to. > > "I'd give my life to be able to play the piano like that!" "Madam, I > did" > > L. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
