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As a high school physics teacher, I had students look at me like I was a genius because I could do inclined plane problems in my head. But in reality, do 50,000 incline plane problems, and you'll probably be cranking them out too!
Tell them "This CAN BE easy with some work" and you're doing your students a service.
I think the author fails to realize whether saying 'easy' is okay or not really depends on what background your audiences have. For example, in the math class I find the professor saying 'it is trivial to get B from A' is quite okay if the proof of that deduction is something the students have learnt in the lower-level classes. I don't know another way to skip the easy proof without saying it is easy. If you know how…
I've found this to be particularly important with things that are fundamentally simple but very abstract. You can teach people quite a bit of advanced mathematics if you don't tell them it's supposed to be difficult; but if you start out by mentioning that it's graduate-level algebra or something, they just shut down and don't even try.
I think this is a big part of the "monad problem", coincidentally. People don't understand monads because everyone says they're impossible to understand. When I came at them, I expected something complex and obscure. I couldn't see their actual simplicity—they have a tiny definition, after all—because of my expectations. On the other hand, when I went to learn about arrows, which are a similarly abstract concept, I didn't have nearly the same difficulties because I wasn't expecting anything and could take the definition as it is. I had a decent understanding of arrows before a decent understanding of monads, which is a shame because I don't really like arrows!
Now, I suppose that this doesn't mean you should call everything "easy", but you should definitely not perpetuate the idea that things are difficult! (Unless, I suppose, you want to intimidate people rather than teach them.)
AFTER EDIT: I simultaneously posted with two other participants here who both made good points. Let learners know that something that feels not easy at first can become easy after practice, and let learners know that sometimes topics may be reasonably easy for them even if other people have said that the topic is hard. I have to emphasize these points to in my classroom teaching.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It actually means a specific thing in mathematics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triviality_(mathematics) (Obvious/easy to prove)
And it's just as specifically subjective.
For example a pathological problem doesn't mean you'll get a nasty MRSA infection from working on that problem. At least not directly...
It's funny, because I have completely the opposite view: stop telling people stuff is difficult! If people think what they're about to learn is supposed to be "hard", they're going to give up faster and be intellectually lazy. "Oh, I just can't figure it out because it's hard ." I've found this to be particularly important with things that are fundamentally simple but very abstract. You can teach people quite a bit o…
The flip side of this is that it may be helpful to tell students "This can be easy for you too, with a little work!" As a high school physics teacher, I had students look at me like I was a genius because I could do inclined plane problems in my head. But in reality, do 50,000 incline plane problems, and you'll probably be cranking them out too! Tell them "This CAN BE easy with some work" and you're doing your studen…
Because although programming is something I enjoy, it hasn't necessarily always come easily to me. I'm not a natural. I learned to be good(ish) at it by slogging away doggedly.
So to me, it's a long -- and never-ending -- journey of things that are difficult... until they become easy. Being confused about something is a constant fact of life, for me. But so is a growing list of things that, in hindsight, now seem easy.
I wish I knew some pithy, quick way to say that to people, so that it's the positive message I mean.
Good god, if only mathematics professors would learn this. If I hear the word 'trivial' one more time I swear I'm going to scream.
A math professor was giving a lecture and then remarked that something was trivial. Somebody raises an objection and asks why. The professor stops and thinks hard for the rest of the lecture, then finally remarks: "Yes, I'm right, it is obvious."
On the other, every developer, especially ones who are just starting off, needs to develop a healthy habit of self-reliance, being able to hunt down documentation and just RTFM in general.
Actually, her examples are pretty much all related to system administration (PATH and SSH). This backs up what I've said several times before: one must learn system administration before learning to code. Precisely because you don't want to be studying how to write in $LANG, only to realize you don't know how to export your PATH, or what that even is. You need to know your environment before knowing how to code.
Finally, her statement:
especially under-represented minorities
Right, because underrepresented minorities are all inherently deficient in autodidactic skills. Quite the progressive sentiment, indeed.