Natural born programmers

Post by yummyfajitas » Fri, Oct 11, 2013, 2:43 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #46

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 e…

Post by chroma » Fri, Oct 11, 2013, 2:45 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #57

chroma wrote: post #47

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 succe…

"Two years ago we appeared to have discovered an exciting and enigmatic new predictor of success in a first programming course. We now report that after six experiments, involving more than 500 students at six institutions in three countries, the predictive effect of our test has failed to live up to that early promise." http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper3.pdf

Post by silentbicycle » Fri, Oct 11, 2013, 2:49 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #53

silentbicycle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before writing the post off with a logical fallacy, perhaps you should consider the biases inherent in doing so, and whether they are distorting your reasoning: http://plover.net/~bonds/bdksucks.html

If my reasoning is incorrect, you should have no trouble finding the error and replying with it. Or feel free to cite applause points and declare victory. HN is still smart enough to see through such nonsense, though it does get worse every day.

Post by vezzy-fnord » Fri, Oct 11, 2013, 2:52 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #33

pradocchia wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was instantly hooked, programmed daily, and some 35 years later I'm still lovin' it. This doesn't demonstrate innate ability. It demonstrates your interest in programming. Do we have natural born interests?

Ok, so how should I phrase it? I grok most programming concepts immediately. When about to take my AP test in programming, my brother realized I was completely lacking in knowledge about pointers, spent a couple hours going over linked lists etc, and the next day aced the test - which was mostly about pointers. I don't know what verbiage would constitute "demonstrate innate ability" to you. I thought what I wrote did…

Post by cpuguy83 » Fri, Oct 11, 2013, 2:57 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #66

pg wrote: post #36

"belief in gift and natural born ability is toxic to all, and by eliminating it, we won’t alienate so many from technology" There is certainly some inborn variation between people. Anyone with children is aware of it. Two children of the same parents can have very different personalities. So what exactly is it supposed to mean to "eliminate a belief" in variation in inborn ability? That we're supposed to believe some…

Paul, you are incredibly smart guy, so seeing you respond to scientific studies with "anyone with children is aware of it" is pretty disappointing. As tokenadult points out, these studies are serious business. Anecdata doesn't really cut it.