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301 sats \ 7 replies \ @kepford 8 Jan \ parent \ on: TechLead says drop learning to code and go all in on Bitcoin mostly_harmless
Spoken like a seasoned programmer.
For years I have tried to encourage people to learn programming and I'm convinced while most of them are capable of it for whatever reason they don't have the same mental defects I do. The defects that keep me doing it :)
I'd struggle to find it, but I recall seeing a study done at Harvey Mudd (my retrospective dream school) where they could predict with 90% accuracy whether someone would graduate with a CS degree based on an aptitude test.
CS as a field has changed a lot, as have our device habits, so maybe aptitude matters less now than before. Still, I suspect we have a special kind of derangement too.
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Yeah, I'll say this. Writing code for all these years has taught me a lot about myself. Both good and bad things.
I do think we humans like to simplify things a bit more than they should be. Its just neat and clean to do so. I'm not as good at math as many programmers I know but I have more artistic leanings than many. I'm also more comfortable communicating and with relational things. I've led teams and while everyone on the team had certain common traits and ways of thinking there is still diversity and it made those teams stronger.
I find it fascinating to observe these things. When you get a group of driven smart people focused on a central goal its pretty gratifying to work together.
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I have a mental defect too which makes me force my students to learn some coding, even though it's not a required part of our major's curriculum.
I force them to do it in my class anyway. For many of them, it's their first exposure. It's brutal for them and brutal for me, but I believe strongly enough in it that I'm pressing on. Mostly, I do it for the good students. I feel like it's too much of a shame if they go through college without having some exposure to programming. (I teach them R, but plan to migrate my class to Python when I have the time.)
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The mental defect comment warrants some explanation for the plebs that may not get it. I have watched people learn to program but those that drop out usually lack the insane drive to know "why" and push through when they are stuck. Sometimes this aspect of myself is a real problem in other areas. But for writing code it really helps me push through.
I am sometimes grateful more people are not like me because man would it be a hard world to live in.
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That being said, it is frustrating to me seeing how easily some students give up or ask for help.
The first error message, their response is to ask for help. Understandable for the first few times. But when I've already debugged spelling errors for you 5 times, you'd think they'd learn to spot those typos themselves, but nope.
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it is frustrating to me seeing how easily some students give up or ask for help.
Yep, sure is. Great teachable moment though.
I have more of the flaw of NOT asking for help soon enough(when that is possible).
When we fail to learn a lesson we are doomed to repeat it. Over and over again.
I wonder with your students how much of it is laziness, lack of interest (due to it being school), or lack of confidence. While I was managing engineers for short time I noticed how insecure many could be. I could see talent and qualities that they seemed blind to in themselves.
I sometimes wonder if our culture of participation trophies has had the opposite effect on people. Removing the sense of pride in accomplishing something. Pushing through a hard problem and proving to yourself you can do it. I spent a lot of time encouraging my team and it usually produced improvement. Now, for that to work you can't be blowing smoke. Constructive criticism needs to be used as well.
@SimpleStacker I'm sure you know this but so many kids have terrible families and poor self image. I imagine you are having an impact on them you may never see. Hopefully if this hasn't already happened someday a former student will find you and share a story about how you impacted them.
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I'm sure you know this but so many kids have terrible families and poor self image. I imagine you are having an impact on them you may never see.
I need to remind myself of this. Because I sometimes find myself getting really frustrated and discouraged by the students.
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