= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
fubarobfusco comments on More intuitive programming languages - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (89)
This is the top link which the 2006 Coding Horror article is based on:
http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/
It's to Saeed Dehnadi's research. In 2006, Dehnadi and Bornat put out a paper purporting to "have discovered a test which divides programming sheep from non-programming goats. This test predicts ability to program with very high accuracy before the subjects have ever seen a program or a programming language." The Coding Horror article, which was heavily linked and discussed in various forums, seems to have popularized this research quite well.
In 2008, the followup research on a much larger and more diverse set of students failed to confirm the effect.
And a 2009 followup showed mixed results.
These followups received substantially less widespread discussion than the original claim. My sneaking suspicion is that this may reflect not only the usual bias in favor of positive results, but a preference on the part of the programming community for the notion that programmers are a special class of people.
(Or it may just be that Coding Horror didn't cover them.)
My suspicion is that such results reflect a failure of teaching.
Imagine that you are teaching people mathematics, and you skip some beginner lessons, and start with the more advanced ones. Some people will have the necessary knowledge (from home, books, internet, etc.), so they can follow you and improve their knowledge. Most people simply don't understand what you are talking about. At the end of the year the test will show that there are two separate groups -- those who know a lot, and those who have no clue.
Please note that the failure of teaching is not necessarily at the level where the problem was discovered. It may be a failure from previous levels. For example a university teacher may expect some really simple knowledge, but many high schools fail to teach it.