Re^3: How to abate the Ubiquitous Fear of Programming

The reason most adults can't draw/paint is related to why they can't program. The mistakes are too painful for an adult.

The reason most adults can't draw/paint is as children they were never given any feedback which allowed them to refine and improve their technique. After a while the kid gets to a point where they are completely frustrated with drawing pictures which they can see look like cat turds and not cats and give up saying "I can't do it". By comparison the majority of children grow up with a fair degree of language competency because parents will correct the child allowing them to see, and thus learn from, their mistakes.

I had a tennis coach when I was in school who said that the saying that "practise makes perfect" was nonsense, he said instead "perfect practise makes perfect". He never hesitated to say if your technique sucked and I was a visibly better tennis player for his coaching.

--
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought. -Basho

Comment on Re^3: How to abate the Ubiquitous Fear of Programming

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Re^4: How to abate the Ubiquitous Fear of Programming by Anonymous Monk on Aug 05, 2004 at 22:37 UTC
practice makes permanent	[reply]
Re^4: How to abate the Ubiquitous Fear of Programming by Scarborough (Hermit) on Aug 06, 2004 at 13:08 UTC
Love the tennis coach story and it reminded me of my teacher on my fundementals of programming course at college. On the first day he said "I've been doing this job for 13 years and I know that there are some of you in this room I won't be able to teach programming too" This caused up roar and complaints to the course head. However he was right at the end of the course out of 24 people, 12 had flunked out, 10 had moved to systems analysis and 4 of us got jobs as programmers. I think part of being good at anything is listening to the right people and acting when they tell you your not doing right.	[reply]
Re^5: How to abate the Ubiquitous Fear of Programming by davis (Vicar) on Aug 29, 2005 at 18:43 UTC
`12+10+4 != 24` [download] davis Kids, you tried your hardest, and you failed miserably. The lesson is: Never try.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^6: How to abate the Ubiquitous Fear of Programming by Anonymous Monk on Feb 25, 2007 at 22:50 UTC
The categories "flunked out", "moved to systems analysis", and "got jobs as programmers" aren't mutually exclusive.	[reply]