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Psy-Kosh comments on Open Thread: March 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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I tested myself with MATLAB (which makes it quite easy) out of some unnecessary curiosity - it took me about seven minutes, a fair part of which was debugging.
I feel rather ashamed of that, actually.
I wouldn't be; I'd take it as (anecdotal) evidence that the craft of programming is systematically undertaught. By which I mean, the tiny, nano-level rules of how best to interact with this strange medium that is code.
(Recently added to my growing backlog of possibly-top-level-post-worthy topics is "how and why programming may be a usefull skill for rationalists to pick up"...)
I have to admit, I was looking up functions in the docs, too - I would have been a bit faster working in pseudocode on paper.
Edit: Also, my training is in engineering, not comp. sci. - the programming curriculum at my school consists of one MATLAB course.
Querying my brain for cached thoughts:
Programming encourages clear thinking - like evolution, it is immune to rationalization.
Thinking in terms of algorithms, rather than problem-answer pairs, and the former generalize.