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Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

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Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

#111

Post by wrsh07 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #109
fao_ wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Programming isn't difficult, you can teach it to an adult in a one-week course and I've taught the fundamentals (if statements, functions, loops) in a two hour session with multiple adolescent friends, the core concepts are mostly intuitive for anyone with a simple grasp of logic. What is difficult is using those systems to understand larger systems, and all of the other crap that comes in programming. In the l…

> along with the lack of the ability for the command line to cope with spaces in filenames Put quotation marks around the file name?

It's hard for people new to programming or talking to a computer to understand how to be precise enough

And I think filenames with spaces is a great example of this

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

#112

Post by fao_ »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #109
fao_ wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Programming isn't difficult, you can teach it to an adult in a one-week course and I've taught the fundamentals (if statements, functions, loops) in a two hour session with multiple adolescent friends, the core concepts are mostly intuitive for anyone with a simple grasp of logic. What is difficult is using those systems to understand larger systems, and all of the other crap that comes in programming. In the l…

> along with the lack of the ability for the command line to cope with spaces in filenames Put quotation marks around the file name?

sure, it's an easy fix, but it's one more hurdle to jump across.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

#113

Post by vharuck »

Scapeghost wrote: post #60

The most key point of this is right at the start: "I decided to just answer straightforwardly" That can make all the difference in your interactions with your child and how they learn about this world. Too many problems are caused by parents not being honest with their kids. Be straightforward, no matter how awkward the explanations may be. Avoid patronizing simplifications and saying things like "you'll understand w…

>If they're not able to understand or decide they don't want to, they'll stop asking.

And they'll only stop asking for a very short while (if they're like all the kids I've talked with). Children are people and value honesty and attention like everyone else. If you try, they'll be back.

Plus, I enjoy it even when they don't understand and leave halfway through the answer. They make the best faces to show they're done.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

#114

Post by nathancahill »

vikramkr wrote: post #65
nathancahill wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome version of 20 questions. My parents are biologists and we played 20 questions with plants/animals on road trips growing up. The games were intense ! Learned a ton.

Did anyone ever just try and search through a phylogenetic tree?

Basically yes, that is what the games evolved in to.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

#115

Post by FpUser »

Causality1 wrote: post #102
FpUser wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I hate to lose reputation with downvotes for sounding negative, but I find my credulity challenged with this story." My opinion about downvotes is that they reflect way more on reputation of those who actually does the thing (unfortunately they stay anonymous). Well HN rates you using down/up votes but personally since I do not agree with this whole anonymous anti-feature I do not really care. Alternatively (lets ad…

I've found HN to be incredibly unpredictable when it comes to public opinion. I've had comments start out with a dozen up votes only to sink into the negatives hours later, and comments that spent a day at negative four suddenly rise into the positives.

Positive sinking into negatives...

Yes that is what I often observe. As for predictability - it seems to me like anything that deviates from the "party line" (whatever that is for any particular area) gets downvoted. Looks like a usual herd mentality to me.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

#116

Post by wolf550e »

JadeNB wrote: post #106
darkerside wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is a series of increasingly smaller lies

> Education is a series of increasingly smaller lies Could you be swayed to the more optimistic "Education is a series of decreasingly incomplete truths"? I'm a math professor, and we do tend to be able to tell our students the truth, nothing but the truth, but very much not the whole truth, at least in every part of the curriculum that I've seen. (That we're able to do so doesn't mean no math teachers lie, but it's…

In my school, I was lied to by teachers instead of just saying "we will get to that later" or something. For example:

Q. how much is 3 - 5?

A. nothing because you cannot take 5 out of 3.

Q. how much is 2 divided by 3?

A. nothing because you cannot divide 2 by 3.

Q. what are the roots of the quadratic function ...?

A. this quadratic function doesn't have roots because you can't take the square root of a negative number

I believe it's possible to not lie when teaching math, but I guess it's harder to do.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

#117

Post by barry-cotter »

darkerside wrote: post #92
jerf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Surely more like that this describes a 6yo kid being excited about something their parent is excited about and a product of implicit empathy, than any significant insight?" Also possible is that what the kid actually understands and what the parent thinks they are understanding are two different things. The kid is quite likely still wrong in some critical way. But that is where we all start with new things. I've got…

Education is a series of increasingly smaller lies

> A lie-to-children (plural lies-to-children) is a simplified explanation of technical or complex subjects as a teaching method for children and laypeople. The technique has been incorporated by academics within the fields of biology, evolution, bioinformatics and the social sciences. It is closely related to the philosophical concept known as Wittgenstein's ladder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

#118

Post by JadeNB »

wolf550e wrote: post #116
JadeNB wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Education is a series of increasingly smaller lies Could you be swayed to the more optimistic "Education is a series of decreasingly incomplete truths"? I'm a math professor, and we do tend to be able to tell our students the truth, nothing but the truth, but very much not the whole truth, at least in every part of the curriculum that I've seen. (That we're able to do so doesn't mean no math teachers lie, but it's…

In my school, I was lied to by teachers instead of just saying "we will get to that later" or something. For example: Q. how much is 3 - 5? A. nothing because you cannot take 5 out of 3. Q. how much is 2 divided by 3? A. nothing because you cannot divide 2 by 3. Q. what are the roots of the quadratic function ...? A. this quadratic function doesn't have roots because you can't take the square root of a negative numbe…

To be sure, there is a habit to make the teacher's life easier by lying, and I certainly believe you when you say that you were lied to; but all of these can be rescued, as a sequence of decreasingly incomplete truths, just by adding quantifiers. Since the human brain is (excessively) good at ignoring quantifiers, a skilled teacher (not me, in this context—I'm a college teacher, so am not claiming that this is the right language for primary schoolers, just that it's true) can speak truthfully without impairing the pedagogy:

Q. how much is 3 - 5?

A. taking 5 out of 3 does not give a whole-number answer.

Q. how much is 2 divided by 3?

A. dividing 2 by 3 does not give an integer answer.

Q. what are the roots of the quadratic function ...?

A. this quadratic function doesn't have real roots because you can't take a real square root of a negative number

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

#119

Post by IggleSniggle »

fao_ wrote: post #112
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> along with the lack of the ability for the command line to cope with spaces in filenames Put quotation marks around the file name?

sure, it's an easy fix, but it's one more hurdle to jump across.

Exactly. And when the inevitable "but why?" comes, you can either say "don't worry about it for now, magic" (disempowering) or explain the actual reason why...when you have lots of these little segues simple tasks and simple concepts become suddenly complex. There's a lot to take in, and although the fix is simple, it's yet one more thing to hold onto that can be imprecisely remembered.

If the next time they sit down to do something at the command line they write the equivalent of `cmd "arg 1 arg 2 arg 3"` it should not be surprising, and frustration that it doesn't work as intended should be expected... especially when they're not even trying to learn about their command line in that moment.

Re: Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)

#120

Post by nikofeyn »

JadeNB wrote: post #106
darkerside wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is a series of increasingly smaller lies

> Education is a series of increasingly smaller lies Could you be swayed to the more optimistic "Education is a series of decreasingly incomplete truths"? I'm a math professor, and we do tend to be able to tell our students the truth, nothing but the truth, but very much not the whole truth, at least in every part of the curriculum that I've seen. (That we're able to do so doesn't mean no math teachers lie, but it's…

i think that the optimism comes from you're the one telling the incomplete truths or lies and not the one hearing them. when i was in graduate school for mathematics, it indeed felt that i had been lied to in undergraduate school. also, i think people are being a bit facetious when they say lie as well, but there's a kernel of truth to it.
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