Re: [tlug] Making programming easier... or something like that

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Attila Kinali writes:

 > Under the assumption that all babies are born with more or less the
 > same abilities (which at least psychology says is true to a very large
 > extend), what in their (early?) lifes makes the difference that by the
 > time they enter school, they have very different abilities?

This is absolutely nonsense.  Usain Boalt is built like Adonis, the
fastest man in the world, and (probably irrelevantly, except for some
weak genetic correlations) he's black.  I'm closer to the fattest man
in the world than the fastest, but good enough at pattern recognition
in realtime that I always led my intramural basketball teams in steals
and generally drew the toughest defensive assignments that didn't
require being at least 190cm tall, and (probably irrelevantly, except
for some weak genetic correlations) I'm white.  Even though race is
not directly relevant to the differences between me and my homie
Usain, I'm quite sure genetics are.

Again, I believe (though I can't prove it) that there is a reason why
essentially all genius mathematicians, and an overwhelming majority of
programmers -- especially hackers -- are male.  That's not to say that
nurture (and social environment!) has no deterring effect on women.
Of course it does, and I see it all around me all the time.  But
"women's intuition" and "mathematical intuition" are definitely not
the same thing!

This is not to say that we should be screening people and forcing them
into different tracks based on some kind of genetic testing.  Nor is
it to say that people whose genetic endowment is "suboptimal" can't
become good, even great, programmers.  But realistically, genes are
going to matter.  If they didn't, you wouldn't recognize the name
"Charles Darwin". ;-)

 > Or is just that assumption wrong and psycholgist couldn't measure
 > the ability of new born babies accuratly?

Any psychologist who claims to measure the capabilities of newborns
"accurately" is suffering from a terminal case of hubristic delusion.

I was talking to a friend yesterday, and he mentioned in passing that
his son, who has a severe developmental disability, was not obviously
slow until they got him into nursery school (and the clue was
disciplinary issues, not cognitive ones).  In hindsight, yes, they can
trace it back to 12 months or maybe even 6.  Maybe ....  But
definitely not all the way back to newborn!

 > If so, what causes this difference in ability?

At this point, nobody has a clue.  We're barely able to determine
which parts of the brain handle programming.  At least I would imagine
so, based on the ability of my colleagues to identify the parts of the
brain which handle strategic thinking in game experiments via fMRI.
At the moment, it's regions 5--10 mm in diameter.  Maybe larger, but
no smaller.  Heck, we can't even dissect a brain and say, "Look at
that huge hippocamus!  Bet this guy was a programmer!"

I would suspect that just as Usain Boalt's muscle *cells* are probably
about as different from mine as Coke is different from Pepsi, but he
has a different mix (of fast- vs. slow-twitch cells), natural
programmers probably have a different mix of neuron types in their
brain.  The thing is, the types of muscle cells are common to many
animals, and we can study them directly to classify them.  We can't
easily do that with brain cells and high-order cognitive functions,
because as far as we know those functions are unique to humans.  I
don't have any knowledge in the matter, but I wouldn't be surprised if
there's zero experiment evidence about neuron types relevant to
programming.