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DeVliegendeHollander comments on That Magical Click - Less Wrong
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I'm still confused, but now my eyes are wide with horror, too. I don't dispute what pjeby said; in retrospect it seems terribly obvious. But how can we deal with it? Is there any way to get someone to start expecting reality to make sense?
I have a TA job teaching people how to program, and I watch as people go from desperately trying to solve problems by blindly adapting example code that they don't understand to actually thinking and being able to translate their thoughts into working, understandable programs. I think the key of it is to be thrust into situations that require understanding instead of just guessing the teacher's password -- the search space is too big for brute force. The class is all hands-on, doing toy problems that keep people struggling near the edge of their ability. And it works, somehow! I'm always amazed when they actually, truly learn something. I think this habit of expecting to understand things can be taught in at least one field, albeit painfully.
Is this something that people can learn in general? How? I consider this a hugely important question.
I wouldn't be surprised if thinking this way about computer programs transfers fairly well to other fields if people are reminded to think like programmers or something like that. There are certainly a disproportionate number of computer programmers on Less Wrong, right?
I think not, but but it may matter what is your native language. As mine is not English and programming languages are generally based on it, when I was 12 and exploring Turbo Pascal, I simply thought of it as Precise-English, while what my language tutor taught me was Sloppy-English. (I still don't really understand on the gut level why they tend to compare programming with math! Math is Numberish and Greekletterish to me, while programming is Precise-English! Apparently I really really care how symbols look like, for some reason.) Anyway, if it is your own native language it may be far more confusing why a precise version of it exists and can be executed by a computer and maybe if you overcome that challenge that helps you. I think I would dislike it if programming languages would be based on my language because it would always confuse me that that when they call a class a class, I think of a school class. For example when I was learning assembler, I got really confused by using the term accumulator. I thought those belong into cars - we call batteries accumulators here. I got to be at least 16 years old when I finally understood that words can have multiple meanings and all of them can be correct usage, but even now at 37 I don't exactly like it. It is untidy... but if I had to deal with that sort of challenge that could potentially make me a better problem solver.