Hi Titus and All, On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 04:57:52AM -0800, C. Titus Brown wrote: > 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?
I didn't mean this to imply any indication or even gut feeling about relative frequency of developing from scratch vs. by tweaking existing code; my intention was to state that people who pursue a new line of research will not have code to go with that available, as "new" implies that nobody has done it before. That's why I think enabling learners to work "from scratch" is important for scientific computing and hence for SWC. If an empirical survey found that people increasingly modify existing code rather than writing their own anew, I'd consider that to be a reason for looking into the causes of that trend and finding ways to enable more efficient and reproducible practices of re-using existing code. From a teaching perspective, one concern I have with "top down" is that from the learner's perspective, the working piece of code they start from is a piece of "magic" that is introduced without a principled explanation of how to arrive at it. As a result, learners may find themselves stuck when they try to apply what they've learned and can't find the piece of "magic" to start from, because that doesn't yet exist. Best regards, Jan > 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 :) -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | email: [email protected] | | WWW: http://www.jtkim.dreamhosters.com/ | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----* _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
