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

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 9:54 PM,  <danprager at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> Michael Forster <mike at sharedlogic.ca> wrote:
>> Funny word that, "experience."  My late Judo teacher used to talk
> [snip]
>
> Interesting that this "hit them over the head" metaphor has brought out a Judo reference!
>
> Are there any other martial arts aficionados (past- or present-) Judo or otherwise out there?
>

I trained JuJutsu for 15 years before coming to the UK. My teacher had
some interesting insights sometimes but I never really related it with
programming. :)

Now, thinking about it, I guess there are a lot of similarities
between programming and learning a martial art. To begin with, you can
learn martial arts without train as you can learn programming without
writing code.

In fact, my teacher used to say: "to improve you only need to do 3
things: train, train, train."
Maybe we can apply it to programming and say: "to improve you only
need 3 things: code, code, code"? Maybe here I would add "read good
books". This divergence from the martial arts world is that most of
the times you train with your teacher, so training includes the
process of learning new techniques and perfecting the old ones, while
in programming sitting alone in a room coding won't probably teach you
anything new.

Interesting to see, as an experiment, how would work the teaching of
programming as if it were a martial art? Every so often you mean for a
couple of hours with your teacher and you code with him, and maybe you
get also to see your master code with someone else and then you
practice by coding with a partner... This would be an awesome
experience! :D

> My confession / plug: http://maaml.blogspot.com
>
> -- Dan
>
>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Michael Forster <mike at sharedlogic.ca>
>> wrote:
>> > On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Grant Rettke <grettke at acm.org> wrote:
>> >> On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Neil Van Dyke <neil at neilvandyke.org>
>> wrote:
>> >>> Random people with Web pages about Scheme, like myself, can also do
>> our part
>> >>> to point people in the right direction:
>> >>
>> >> Have you found some successful ways to communicate, or convince,
>> >> experienced programmers that there is something for them to learn
>> with
>> >> HtDP?
>> >>
>> >> Most "experienced programmers" tend to be convinved that there is
>> >> nothing left to learn but new APIs and frameworks.
>> >
>> > Funny word that, "experience."  My late Judo teacher used to talk
>> > about the difference between "20 years' worth of experience" and "one
>> > year's worth, repeated 20 times over."
>> >
>> > Mike
>> >
>>
>> I should clarify, as I just did to someone who replied off-list, that
>> I didn't mean to imply that one measure was better.  My teacher was
>> simply asking us to consider the _difference_.  And, perhaps, that any
>> amount of experience can be a hindrance in some instances.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Mike
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Paulo Jorge Matos - pocmatos at gmail.com
Webpage: http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/pocm