[plt-scheme] Hit People Over the Head with HtDP and martial arts!??

From: Jon Rafkind (rafkind at cs.utah.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 5 18:19:17 EST 2009

> Since then, I often compare martial arts to computer science, and in
> the broad strokes it's usually pretty close.  (I suppose it could just
> be easy to maintain a superficial analogy.)  Martial arts is presented
> as "train, train, train", but you can't make someone go train until
> you've first showed them how to do something the right way.  Training
> without instruction is a good way to get hurt.  Programming classes
> may seem like "read, read, read", but if you don't apply your
> knowledge to writing programs you won't really understand it.  In both
> cases, you need to learn the fundamentals, then apply them until
> you've mastered them.
>
>   
Ok I can't resist my little anecdote. I've been playing racquetball for 
8 years and now play with people on campus, but I lost a lot in the 
beginning because apparently I sucked! The coach showed me what I was 
doing wrong in about 5 minutes and after a few weeks of practice I'm now 
at a reasonable skill level, orders of magnitude better than I was 
before. Its obvious in retrospect what I was doing wrong before but I 
didn't have the insights to improve myself on my own.


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