Mark Guzdial wrote:
> What motivates
> someone to pick up programming without any previous background (and
> without, presumably, any desire to make it a profession)?
I clearly remember why I wanted to learning to program,
being stumped when I started and the "aha!" moment when I
got it.
When I was 18, I had a feeling I would like (and be good at)
smoking, programming and shooting guns. In my final year of
my psychology degree, programming was one of the offered
options and I jumped at it.
We were taught BASIC and I remember staring miserably at a
slide with:
LET A = A + 1
I was flumoxed, thinking that it made no sense at all.
My "aha!" was when I realised that, although the 'A's
looked exactly the same (which rendered the statement
meaningless), the A on the left was actually the 'A'
in the future.
In contrast, I did badly on my physics 'A' level because I
got stumped frequently in class but was too shy to ask
for help. Soon, there's nowhere meaningful (in one's
head) to store the continual incoming new information and
it all becomes gobbledeegook.
Paola
--
http://www.paolability.com/
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