Ruven said:
> There's one slight flaw in Alan's argument. What I said was:
>
> > Both of these cases also illustrate that substantial
> > amounts of programming knowledge is above the level
> > of the individual programming language constructs.
>
> This knowledge is NOT general engineering knowledge, project
> management knowledge, software design knowledge, or industrial
> management knowledge.
That's an interesting assertion. The actual tasks you were
referring to were:
[1] "write a (simple) kernal for a portable operating system that
supports symmetric multiprocessors"
[2] "write a program to run an automobile body welding machine"
For task 1, you said a student would have to "learn operating
systems, get some practical experience" This really does sound
like software design knowledge to me.
For task 2, you said a Linux programmer would have to be
"... learning about automobile body welding systems and the
programming of PLCs". This sounds like engineering knowledge to
me.
You also said:
> If there are 500 schools doing research on engineering knowledge etc.
> and 1 school is doing research on just usability of programming languages,
> then who is is left to do research on the rest of psychology of programming,
> the part that is independent of specific programming languages?
>
> No one, I suspect.
I believe that the academic establishment rapidly expands to
fill gaps in the research ecosystem. If there was any real need
for the psychology of automobile body welding, someone would be
doing it.
I stand by my claim that the psychological study of generic
"programming plans", as a cognitive tool for studying the nature
of low level programming activity, is a minor but worthwhile
contribution - irrespective of the relatively greater importance
of other contextual factors. The reason that the whole
"programming plans" discussion arises is (as you know) that this
*is* an attempt to study the factors that affect the design of
programming tools, independently of any one language.
Alan
--
Alan Blackwell Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/afb21/ Phone: +44 (0) 1223 334418
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