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Natural born programmers

programmingisterrible.com

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Re: Natural born programmers

#41

Post by llimllib »

danso wrote: post #3

Hmmm....I've been a programmer for awhile now and have never really felt the mythos that "you are born a programmer." In fact, I would argue that among professions, programming is probably one of the most merit-based ones around, in which we routinely celebrate those who can hack something clever after a relatively short time of learning programming. What other profession can you think of that would allow (and usuall…

> I think the programming profession does not celebrate the idea of "born programming"

Seriously? Just read the comments above. I'll quote you some of the best if you'd like.

Re: Natural born programmers

#42

Post by yummyfajitas »

davedx wrote: post #22
yummyfajitas wrote: post #11

This article is nothing but a blatant argumentum ad consequentiam, which is a logical fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences The argument given here is basically "mathematical ability is not innate, because if it were, women would react badly to this fact." The article provides lots of evidence that women react badly to this belief, but no evidence whatsoever that the belief is wrong.

Isn't the women's performance being the same as men's in the math tests when they weren't told math skills are innate evidence that women are just as good at math as men?

"Women are just as good at math as men" is not the same proposition as "mathematical ability is innate". The latter is not incompatible with the former.

Further, the evidence cited here does not show that women are just as good at math as men, since the samples used were not randomly chosen. The samples chosen consisted of men and women who had already taken calculus (and some other criteria).

http://www.lscp.net/persons/ramus/fr/GDP1/papers/spencer99.p...

The articles do a good job of showing women are sensitive to stereotype threat. But that's all they show.

Re: Natural born programmers

#43

Post by simias »

stiff wrote: post #19

There are two distinct things, both being true, as far as current research shows: - People who believe that mathematics is an ability that can be trained perform much better than the ones that believe it is an innate skills some people have some people don't - Intelligence, and as a consequence the upper limit of mathematical ability, is to a large extent genetically determined There is no conflict between those two…

Can you provide some sources for those statements?

Re: Natural born programmers

#44

Post by skraushaar »

I am one of these folks that claims natural math/development skills which were inherited from my natural parents. Here is my empirical evidence:

I was neither raised by or knew my biological family growing up (though I know them now). My mother is a developer, my supposed bio-dad is a developer, my late grandmother on my mother's side was a mathematician & psychologist, my grandfather on my mother's side was on the early teams at IBM, and my uncle whom is close to a doppelganger of me is a developer/linux admin. I knew none of these people growing up. My father and mother who raised me are respectively a restaurant manager and a hair stylist. Neither have any significant interest in the sciences or mathematics realms. Somehow I ended up in the family business without a shred of influence from them.

Take my story for what you want, but in this case the women were very much involved with the biological version.

Re: Natural born programmers

#45

Post by ctdonath »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #18
ctdonath wrote: post #9

While certainly a combination of nature and nurture, there's little question natural born programmers exist. I am one. At 4th grade Dad brought home a terminal and had me type in a 3 line BASIC program (printed a sine wave). I was instantly hooked, programmed daily, and some 35 years later I'm still lovin' it. That nature had to be nurtured lest it be starved or destroyed, and given room and care to flourish it did.

Sounds very similar to how an entire generation got started with programming. Whatever cause you attribute to your interest, I find it more reasonable to believe that you found the concept of having a computer render your input on a screen to be fascinating and that it led you to teach yourself and practice further how to do this, or a multitude of reasons, but not that you had some inherent predisposition to being a…

I don't see how it's not indicative of some inherent predisposition thereto. I realize the prior post was brief and may not have gotten the point across fully; point is, most choices I made revolved around programming, it's what I did (and do) for fun, it's how I view the world.

That an entire generation got started the same way may very well be indicative of "inherent predisposition": that period made it easy for the predisposed youth to reach the leading edge of technology very fast and keep pace for a very long time. This in contrast with the current generation, whom I often worry find it nigh unto impossible to "begin at the beginning", there being such a vast swath of complexity between individual transistor and, say, Skyrim: the nature may be there, but nurturing it is much more difficult.

Re: Natural born programmers

#46

Post by pessimizer »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #11

This article is nothing but a blatant argumentum ad consequentiam, which is a logical fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences The argument given here is basically "mathematical ability is not innate, because if it were, women would react badly to this fact." The article provides lots of evidence that women react badly to this belief, but no evidence whatsoever that the belief is wrong.

>"mathematical ability is not innate, because if it were, women would react badly to this fact."

That's not the argument. I think the argument is that when people are told that they are expected to do worse than their peers, they do, but when they are not told that, the gap disappears. Therefore arguments from statistics about innate ability to perform being associated with other characteristics (being a woman, for example) when widespread, become circular.

This is the argument.

>[...]belief in gift and natural born ability is toxic to all, and by eliminating it, we won’t alienate so many from technology.

This is a consequence of the argument.

As to the identification of some actual physical ability in math or programming which is defined at birth, it requires a positive proof that's not circular. A study on the innate relative unemployability of American blacks would find a lot of statistics to back it up, but would be a circular waste of everyone's time and a consequence of that (based on experimental evidence) would be a higher rate of unemployment in American blacks. Note that the fact that there's a pragmatic consequence of pursuing a field of study in a particular way has no reflection on the truth of the thesis, yet taints the effort of determining that truth.

As far as I'm aware, the only arguments for innate mathematical ability are dripping with survivorship bias.

Re: Natural born programmers

#47

Post by chroma »

Let's say I grant the author his points about harming gender balances and programming culture. That still doesn't address the most important question: Is it true? Is programming an innate ability?

It's unclear whether programming can be taught, but the most depressing study in this area is called The Camel Has Two Humps [1]:

We have found a test for programming aptitude, of which we give details. We can predict success or failure even before students have had any contact with any programming language with very high accuracy, and by testing with the same instrument after a few weeks of exposure, with extreme accuracy. We present experimental evidence to support our claim. We point out that programming teaching is useless for those who are bound to fail and pointless for those who are certain to succeed.

It will take more than this single study to fully convince me, but it definitely put a dent in my initial belief.

1. http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf

Re: Natural born programmers

#48

Post by pessimizer »

LanceH wrote: post #38
davedx wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Intelligence, and as a consequence the upper limit of mathematical ability, is to a large extent genetically determined Which research?

He's not making that claim, merely pointing out that the claim isn't mutually exclusive to the other claim.

>both being true, as far as current research shows

Re: Natural born programmers

#49

Post by rm999 »

LanceH wrote: post #38
davedx wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Intelligence, and as a consequence the upper limit of mathematical ability, is to a large extent genetically determined Which research?

He's not making that claim, merely pointing out that the claim isn't mutually exclusive to the other claim.

He is making that claim:

>both being true, as far as current research shows

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