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. Mark
________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Peter Gutmann Sent: Sun 6/24/2007 2:26 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; discuss@ppig.org Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: PPIG discuss: Programmer education argument-starter of the week "Gaspar, Alessio (USF Lakeland)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >Mmmm, this analogy is flawed, what about reconsidering it along the lines of: > >Car mechanics = electrical engineering / comp org / comp architecture >Driving professionally = programming / software engineering >Driving casually = using a computer Going off on a bit of a tangent, what about considering the evidence in "The Camel has Two Humps" (http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf) which argues that programming ability shows a strong bimodal distribution and that some people will never learn to program/be good programmers no matter what teaching methods you use, while others will, no matter what teaching methods you use. Maybe it's not a case of "you need to understand X" but "you need to be born with the geek gene". Peter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
