NYCPHP Meetup

[tedd]

At 8:10 PM -0400 4/14/08, David Krings wrote:
>tedd wrote:
>>I'm not saying that he shouldn't answered the question as you 
>>intended, but let's stop and examine this incident -- your question 
>>was:
>>
>>7) a and b are variables.
>>
>>    a = 10
>>    b = 20
>>    a = b
>>
>>    The new values of a and b are, respectively:
>>
>>And his answer was:
>>
>>    a= 0.5, b=1
>>
>
>In case you haven't already read this, here is the research paper 
>about this problem and the various outcomes:
>
>http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf

No, I had not read that -- but the article drives home the point I 
was making in that it's very difficult to test a person's ability to 
program.

Programming is more akin to the basic method of a person's ability to 
resolve and interpret the world around them. I have my own theories, 
but I don't think they would be acceptable in academic circles.

But think of this -- we all know that color-blind people see things 
differently and that's considered a disability. However, in WWII we 
successfully used color-blind personnel to detect camouflaged enemy 
positions. Now imagine a color-blind person trying to teach normal 
visioned people how to do that. That's the type of problem you run 
into teaching programming. But on the same point, a color-blind 
person would have little problem explaining that to another 
color-blinded person (of course of the same color-blindness). That's 
the main reason for the two-humped test results the article mentions. 
You either "get-it" or you don't.

Some of the top programmers I ever met, had no formal education. Explain that.

Cheers,

tedd
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