On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 09:34:09AM +0000, Jan T Kim wrote: > When using the "top down" approach of starting with a prepared piece of > working code, I'd suggest that learners should be made aware that code > is normally developed from scratch, rather than by modifying existing code, > and encouraged / empowered to "reversely engineer" how the example code > was developed in the first place.
Hi Jan, while I don't have any evidence to the contrary, I also don't have any evidence *for* the statement that "code is normally developed from scratch, rather than by modifying existing code." In my experience many people (including myself) start from modifying existing code most of the time. Are there any sources of evidence (surveys, publications) that tell us? The closest thing I found is: Hannay et al, 2009 http://software-carpentry.org/files/bib/secse-survey-2009.pdf which doesn't directly address the question, but does show that most scientist do not have any formal training in software development. best, --titus p.s. I know everyone will have opinions - I'm more curious if we *know* anything here :) _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
