On 3 Jul 2007, at 3:20 am, Lindsay Marshall wrote:
So I would be, frankly, astonished if it could be shown that
*everyone* is equally trainable in programming to a
professional standard, any more than it could be shown that
everyone could learn to be a professional golfer or a
professional artist or a professional mathematician or a
professional teacher.
Actually I think that most people could be trained to these levels or
pretty close to them with sufficient effort.
There's a book on one of my study shelves at home by an American
neurologist. I'm sorry, I can't recall the name, but I think it may
have been the same one who wrote "Toscanini's Fumble". One of the
essays in it concerns the failure of someone famous in sport X to be
any good in sport Y, to which he transferred.
The neurologist made the point that some things take a LOT of practice
and if you start too late you will NEVER be much good at it. You cannot
expect a professional baseballer to also play tennis to professional
level (although he would of course beat a rabbit like me every time).
All the really good programmers I've ever met picked up the elements of
the subject (including assignment statements) before anyone tried to
teach them. That includes colleagues and students taught here. The
one programming paper I ever had as an undergraduate was actually a
numerical analysis paper taught by a really good numerical analyst who
was not much good as a programmer.
I sometimes think we can't teach programming at all; the best we can
do is provide an opportunity for people to learn without getting in
their way too much.
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