Re: [tlug] What is Code?

[Claus Aranha <caranha@example.com>]

Hello! This thread is super interesting.

On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 5:02 PM, Attila Kinali <attila@example.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Jun 2015 09:29:59 +0900
> "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>  wrote:
>
>> Programming has the same problem, I think.  Since it's purely mental,
>> there's nothing to be (physically) adjusted.
>
> Yes. Absolutely.
>

Hm... I am not sure I agree with this a hundred percent. I think there
is definitely a point where practising with mental exercises may
adjust your "mental muscles" (for lack of a better term) in the exact
same way that is done in martial arts, music, etc (in fact, I would
even argue that a non-insignificant part of the conditioning in these
skills is mental conditioning as well)

To bring this back to programming, I am trying to use the idea above
in a course I am teaching to CS undergraduates. The course has almost
no lecturing, and is mostly having the students solve dozens of
simple/short programming problems taken from programming marathons.
This is of course an approach that might not work for someone with
zero programming knowledge (maybe? project Euler?) but when I started
teaching I was surprised at the amount of CS students who would get
stuck at the idea of starting to write a simple script.

So I wonder if just MAKING them write code would help break that
barrier. They know the algorithms (very well, in theory), but many
couldn't debug an infinite loop to save their life :-/

PS: Stephen, thanks for the hello! I actually joined the list in 2007,
and have been lurking since then :-)