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- Xref: sparky comp.lang.c:16688 comp.software-eng:4353
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.software-eng
- Path: sparky!uunet!gumby!wupost!cs.uiuc.edu!johnson
- From: johnson@cs.uiuc.edu (Ralph Johnson)
- Subject: Re: Will we keep ignoring this productivity issue?
- Message-ID: <Bxvq7z.DKs@cs.uiuc.edu>
- Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
- References: <1992Nov13.062945.425@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu> <BxnpJL.BvM@cs.uiuc.edu> <1992Nov17.003350.2649@tcsi.com> <1992Nov17.142332.8286@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com>
- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 21:26:23 GMT
- Lines: 46
-
- shanks@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com (Mark Shanks) writes:
-
- >> Can love of programming be taught?
-
- >No, no more than fastidiousness can be taught, or leadership, or
- >to stretch, musical genius, superior athletic ability, or how to
- >write a best seller.
-
- >I maintain that superior
- >programming ability is inherent; it can be developed in those who
- >who have it, but you can't teach it any more than you could turn a
- >tennis star into a stock broker or an orchestral conductor into
- >a neurosurgeon.
-
- You can teach fastidiousness (my wife teaches it to my children),
- you can teach leadership, you can teach musical talent and athletic
- ability. You can teach writing, you can teach playing tennis, you
- can teach how to be a stock broker, you can teach how to conduct
- an orchestra and how to be a neurosurgeon. Sure, you can't teach
- EVERYBODY how to do it, and, in general, it takes so much time to
- be good at anything that people have to pick one thing and then
- spend most of their life concentrating on it. But it is just silly
- to claim that all things in life are inherent and cannot be taught.
-
- The same is true of programming. If you are going to be good at
- something then you must work hard. The reason that there are so
- many good black basketball players is because there are boys in
- inner cities who practice half of each day for years at a time.
- Some of them have the genetic gifts to be taller and faster than
- most of their peers, but even the short ones develop phenomenal
- skills. Practice, hard work, and desire are the main attributes
- necessary to developing skill. That's why most of the superprogrammers
- love to program. They practice because they love it, not because they
- are forced to. Love leads to practice which leads to skill.
- However, I know a few very good pianists who practiced for the first
- four or five years of their life because their parents made them;
- love came later, after they started to enjoy their skills.
-
- Becoming a good programmer requires lots of practice. It also requires
- education in the fundamentals. It also requires native ability. That
- native ability is pretty much the same as that shared by all engineers
- and mathematicians. I think the reason that so many engineers and
- mathematicians are poor programmers is because of poor training and
- lack of practice, NOT because of lack of ability.
-
- Ralph Johnson -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
-