[plt-scheme] Computers considered harmful

On Thu, May 07, 2009 at 01:10:10PM +0300, Ivan Altaparmakov wrote:
> Hi 
> 
> When i started to study scheme 
> it was because i wanted to improve myself 
> and i studied it entirely without computer.
> I can say i have improvement in myself because of scheme and HtDP 
> but i am not sure i become a good programmer ... 
> So studding without computer is possible it has some advantages, 
> but is it always practical ? :)

To learn to program you need two skils:

  * to break up the problem into pieces the computer can do, and
  * to debug the collection of pieces you end up with.

The second is by far the most labour-intensive part of 
programming, and cannot be learned without a computer.

The first part can be learned to an extent without a computer, but 
without a computer you miss a big part of the point -- that some 
ways of doing it are much better than others, because they reduce the 
amount of debugging that needs to be done by orders of magnitude.  
Sometimes they even make it possible to finish debugging.

-- hendrik