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<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Doug Williams <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:m.douglas.williams@gmail.com">m.douglas.williams@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">I generally stay out of the academic discussions, but this one reminds me a lot of the old discussions that would crop up about "The Programmer's Stone" white paper years ago. I wasn't able to find the original white paper in a quick search, but the (I assume original) author has a blog with what seems to be the same material repackaged and possibly/probably revised. It seems the history is at <a href="http://www.the-programmers-stone.com/about" target="_blank">http://www.the-programmers-stone.com/about</a> and 'the meat' seems to start at <a href="http://the-programmers-stone.com/the-original-talks/day-1-thinking-about-thinking/" target="_blank">http://the-programmers-stone.com/the-original-talks/day-1-thinking-about-thinking/</a> -- I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the material.<br>
<br>I guess my own view is that programming (e.g., methodologies, languages, tools, etc) has been defined by people who 'are good at it'. Unfortunately, we also tend to lack the introspective ability to know why we are 'good at it' or really even how we do it. Because of this, many people believe that it is an art -- with some kind of innate ability associated with it -- rather than a science or engineering discipline based on processes that can be taught successfully. I applaud the efforts of those people who are tying to do the latter.</blockquote>
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<div>I am a bit unclear whether you are saying programming is an art/science, or that you are saying that we can have a scientific method toward teaching programming. As the links you cited (mappers vs packers) sits in the camp of programming being a heavily intellectual and creative activity that aren't easily duplicated by coming up with and following more ever more complex processes. </div>
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<div>Cheers,</div>
<div>yc</div>
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