Focusing on the reasons for motivation is indeed a very interesting question. Couple of thoughts on the idea:
1. Some people end up loving doing what they feel they can do. The beginner [musician / programmer / sculptor] who tries his/her hand at something and is encouraged by the result, is often the amateur who practices alone and sometimes, but not necessarily, the professional. A lot of open source programmers contribute out of passion / interest to projects long before they make a living from them. Do you like programming because you're already good at it or do you become good at it because you like it to start off with? 2. There is also an interesting question about whether you can really "motivate" people to like something or "ignite professional passions" on demand. While this is akin to the philosophical stone for any computing program with low enrollment, it seems to me that this becomes more marketing than education. As in many marketing schemes, you end up building the product which satisfies the masses and I don't think that if the product is education this is a viable dynamics 3. We need indeed to differentiate between the car mechanics, the professional driver (our "hard core" programmers, CS graduates) and the casual driver. Today, using a computer means sometimes installing software, sometimes writing code (macros, small scripts). Look at the languages embedded in video games to allow players to script the behavior of game agents. While all of these activities are technically speaking programming, none of them require formal and in-depth training. These skills could be taught in computer literacy courses for instance, should we adopt the same approach for training computing professionals? I'm not so sure and would tend to say no. Do we have many example of schools producing neuron surgeons who avoided bio chemistry in their early years but practiced with "virtual operating room"(tm) software instead because it was more pleasing / entertaining / motivating for MD candidates who didn't have a sufficient taste for the hard parts of their curriculum? Just my 3 cents and a half :) Ps: did you notice how talking about programming always bring us to compare with art, not science or technologies :) -----Original Message----- From: Mark Guzdial [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 2:14 PM To: Lindsay Marshall Cc: Peter Gutmann; Gaspar, Alessio (USF Lakeland); discuss@ppig.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: PPIG discuss: Programmer education argument-starter of the week 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/
