Programming as a Way of Thinking
blogs.scientificamerican.com
Programming as a Way of Thinking
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Re: Programming as a Way of Thinking
#2Nice. I've actually found ideas in programming about modularity and complexity to be ways to approach such complexity in economics, physics, social relationships etc. "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" for example is about design in the abstract and often through examples in architecture but the ideas re: the ontology developed help and are helped by similar ideas in structuring software. This is especially the case when thinking about modeling live simulations like video games. In the vein of "Notes," our normal semantics about the "categories" of thought we have like CS, philosophy etc. might be more "categorical" than needed.
Some thing I want to play with more is OS-y scheduling and AI-y thought as ways to think about time management or problem-solving for "humans."
Re: Programming as a Way of Thinking
#3I had a math teacher at my high school who used python and SAGE to teach us pre-calculus as well as programming, computational thinking and some mathematical logic. He was an absolute genius and I wouldn't be where I was if it wasn't for him - unfortunately the school saw him as a threat to the standard model of teaching and drove him insane before he just quit. I hope he's doing ok.
Re: Programming as a Way of Thinking
#4The reason we went for Turbo Pascal in the old days was the readability. ( it was C or Pascal )
Re: Programming as a Way of Thinking
#5> With a computational approach, we can go “top down”, starting with libraries that implement the most important algorithms, like Fast Fourier Transform. Students can use the algorithms first and learn how they work later.
This is exactly how I understood it. Three years back, WebAudio API was a new addition in browsers and I decided I should make something with it. I settled on building a Whistle Detector using a cited research paper as my basis. I barely understood anything in that paper and had to dig into DSP, FFT and other basics to get around. As I had no external help, I struggled plenty but managed to complete it after two weeks [1].
Funny enough, we had a DSP course which never made sense to me. Two weeks into my puzzle I walked away with more useful knowledge than the course ever did. What has always motivated me to learn is the application. I can work tirelessly if there is an interesting thing to build, even if I have to go through mundane theory. But, I find it utterly tedious to learn theory with no immediate goal in mind.
Re: Programming as a Way of Thinking
#6> Programming has changed. In first generation languages like FORTRAN and C, the burden was on programmers to translate high-level concepts into code. With modern programming languages—I’ll use Python as an example—we use functions, objects, modules, and libraries to extend the language...
This is the first paragraph. I understand that it's just setting the stage, but it makes so little sense by itself that I had to make an effort to continue reading.
Re: Programming as a Way of Thinking
#7Nice work. Of course teaching engineering [0] and physics [1] from a computational perspective is not a new idea.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation...
Re: Programming as a Way of Thinking
#8I had a math teacher at my high school who used python and SAGE to teach us pre-calculus as well as programming, computational thinking and some mathematical logic. He was an absolute genius and I wouldn't be where I was if it wasn't for him - unfortunately the school saw him as a threat to the standard model of teaching and drove him insane before he just quit. I hope he's doing ok.
You should try to find him and say hello.
Re: Programming as a Way of Thinking
#9The author focuses on the algorithmic and computational aspects of programming. Yet, nowadays programming is much more than this beautiful classical view on programming. Programming is more about describing a complex system by taking into account such aspects as concurrency, cross-cutting concerns, asynchronous events, transactionality, distributed computations etc.
Re: Programming as a Way of Thinking
#10> Programming has changed. In first generation languages like FORTRAN and C, the burden was on programmers to translate high-level concepts into code. With modern programming languages—I’ll use Python as an example—we use functions, objects, modules, and libraries to extend the language... This is the first paragraph. I understand that it's just setting the stage, but it makes so little sense by itself that I had to…
Yeah, that was an odd start, given that Dr. Downey is a Professor of Computer Science. Even a charitable suggestion that he was looking to keep things as understandable as possible for a wide audience doesn't seem to give much defense.
I think he was trying to articulate how much more expressive/extensive programming languages and libraries (and tools?) have gotten over the years, so that a student can get to do something interesting with much less down-and-dirty arithmetic and arcana.