Paul Gilmartin wrote:
It's kinda like how people say "steep learning curve"
(understanding increases rapidly) when they mean
"shallow learning curve" (understanding increases slowly).
(Or maybe they have the ordinate and the abscissa conceptually
swapped: time on the Y-axis?)
I disagree !
The 'steepness' of the curve doesn't depend on the time it takes to
perform the task, but rather on the amount of work involved.
A curve is steep if the amount of work required to achieve the task
requires more work than a 'shallow' climb.
Let's take a computer analogy then:
Learning how to display a count from 1 to 10..
I can do this is assembler or in basic.
In Basic, the curve us shallow, because the amount of information I have
to assimilate to do this is trivial..
10 FOR I = 1 TO 10
20 PRINT I
30 NEXT
RUN
...
In Assembler, the learning curve is steep because, to achieve the same
result, I have to learn about :
- The architecture
- Registers
- OS Standard linkage
- OS conventions
- Etc..
(ex : Old CMS 1-10 count in asm)
MYPROG CSECT *
STM 14,12,12(13)
BALR 12,0
USING *,12
ST 13,SAVEA+4
LA 13,SAVEA
LA 3,1
LOOP DS 0H
LINEDIT TEXT='...',SUB=(DEC,(3))
LA 3,1(3)
C 3,=A(10)
BNH LOOP
L 13,4(13)
LM 14,12,12(13)
XR 15,15
BR 14
DS 0D
SAVEA DS 18F
LTORG
END
***
In the end, of course, although the learning curve was steep (it took me
a lot of work to achieve my goal), the overall height achieved was higher !
--Ivan
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