[IAEP] Why Is programming an unnatural activity?

[Steve Thomas]

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 1:29 PM, Yamaplos . <yamaplos at gmail.com> wrote:

> Steve,
>
> for some reason the link to your blog didn't work for me. JIC others
> needed it, here:
>
> http://mrstevesscience.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-is-programming-unnatural-activity.html

Thanks for the correction.

Brilliant!
> I really appreciate you pointing out these great ideas to the rest of us.
>
> For many years I have struggled on trying to understand what makes it
> so that some people can and others can't. My conclusion is still that
> it is clearly a "gifting", part of the uniqueness every living being
> is created with. Some are "natural" programmers, others aren't

The latter being the majority by far, ergo, as a general thing
> "programming is unnatural", end of story.
>
I actually regret using the word "unnatural" and would now switch to "hard"
(although I still agree it is "unnatural" or non-universal)



> Ideologically this is very inconvenient, of course, since it is quite
> unfashionable, nay, *very* inappropriate, political incorrect to point
> at differences in potential from conception, but, no longer being
> constrained by ideology, I can afford to call it as it is.
>
Well I would be careful in saying "some people can and others can't" and
that some are "naturals."  I agree and have no problem saying we are not
all born or created equal as far as intelligence, size or looks are
concerned (I got more than my fair share of good looks, ego and bad
eyesight ;)

Yet, I come from the point of view that if kids don't get it it's my fault,
not the kids, perhaps not totally realistic, but it pushes me to do better
and that really is all I have control over.

Also, I would ask what is it about the way we teach programming and (I
think perhaps more importantly) the languages (programming and the words
 we use and think with) and problems we use to teach, that allows certain
kids to "get it" and others not?   For example as shown by Etoys and
Scratch, parallel programming is actually easier (unless perhaps if you
start with the sequential view and get trapped in thinking in that paradigm
and are asked to do concurrency with Pthreads)

Another thing that comes to mind is that all my kids can sing, yet neither
my wife nor I have would every be asked to sing (more likely we would be
asked to stop).  Perhaps they got a lucky draw, but I think more likely it
is the music exposure we were fortunate enough to be able to give them and
the great teachers and programs we found.  I think we need different types
of programs for teaching "programming" as well, to appeal to more kids and
allow them opportunity to be as successful as they are capable of becoming.


This still leaves me with trying to figure out who it  makes sense to
> invest in. And apparently more difficult, how best to "seed" that
> process, and overcome "blocks" (in some way what your authors call
> "bugs"), some of these set there by the kindness of the official
> one-size-fits-all education experts. Your notes and the authors you
> point out will help learn and understand how this all happens, thank
> you.
>
Thank you please share what you learn.

Of course, even then we are left with trying to figure out how to beat
> socioeconomics, like this kid in a Nepal school I met, that will have
> extra struggles to go through to achieve his potential.
>
Well you could spend time trying to figure out how to "beat socioeconomics"
and as my Great Aunt Suslie used to say "I wish you lots of luck," or
simply do what you can to leave the world a bit better wherever you are :)

Stephen


>
> 2012/2/29, Steve Thomas <sthomas1 at gosargon.com>:
> > So I am sharing my blog post Why Is programming an unnatural
> activity?Hoping
> > to get some feedback from the community.
> >
> > For my P2PU course I have been looking at "Novice" programmers.  And in
> one
> > of the papers we were asked to read Mark Guzdial asks:
> >
> > “Why?” Is programming an unnatural activity?
> >
> > Could programming be made easier in a different form?
> >
> > Could programming be taught in a different way that makes learning
> easier?
> >
> > Or maybe we just have no idea how to actually measure what students know
> > about programming.* (1).*
> >
> > My main problem with the Guzdial paper (this was more my problem than a
> > problem with the paper) is I felt it didn't provide enough details or
> > specifics on "Why it is so hard to learn to Program?"  I need specifics
> and
> > examples to get my head around things.  Roy Pea, was a great find and
> > perhaps not surprisingly (for me at least) the Resnick article was very
> > useful.
> >
> > Pea (et al) talked about three classes of bugs:
> >
> >    1. Parallelism Bugs
> >    2. Intentionality Bugs
> >    3. Egocentrism Bugs
> >
> > *Parrallelism Bugs*
> > The Parallelism Bugs, is basically an "assumption of different lines in a
> > program can be active or known by the computer at the same time or
> > in parallel".  For example, look at this code:
> >
> >
> > If (Size == 10)
> >     print "Hello"
> > For Size in range(10):
> >     print Size
> >
> > When High School students. in their second year of programming course,
> were
> > asked what they thought the program would print 8 out of 15 predicted
> > "Hello" would print after "10".
> >
> > *Intentionality Bugs*
> > The Intentionality Bugs, is the idea in the child's mind that "the
> program
> > has goals and knows or sees what will happen elsewhere in itself."
> >
> > *Egocentrism Bugs*
> > The Egocentrism Bugs, stem from the belief that there "is more of their
> > meaning for what they want to accomplish in the program than is actually
> > present in the code."  Funny, I see these kinds of bugs all the time in
> my
> > code and those of other experience programmers :)
> >
> > *The Super Bug*
> > He concludes that all these derive from the Super Bug:
> >
> > <
> http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sQRGOhtVBbM/T03XIvqxgvI/AAAAAAAABBg/itlJA6dtKhU/s1600/SuperBug%0D.png
> >
> > The idea that there is a "hidden mind somewhere inside the programming
> > language that has intelligent and interpretive powers."  Not surprising
> > since most of kids experiences are with semi-intelligent beings (aka
> > Parents)
> >
> > MultiLogo: A Study of Children and Concurrent Programming - Mitchel
> > Resnick<http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/MultiLogo.html>
> > Resnick, noted that:
> >
> > "This sequential paradigm does not match the way the real world works:
> > people and animals act in parallel, objects interact in parallel. As a
> > result, many real-world activities can not be modelled in a natural way
> > with sequential programming."
> >
> > Thus developed a concurrent or parrallel version of Logo (Multi-Logo), so
> > they kids had a language/environment that more closely matched their view
> > of the world.  Although he did not go "parrallel" enough, and in his
> > lessons learned asked "
> >
> > *SideNote*: I used to think and say that Concurrent Programming was
> really
> > really hard.  I had plenty of evidence to back this up and had heard and
> > read much smarter people than me saying the same thing.  Then I
> encountered
> > Etoys (and later Scratch) and started teaching these to kids.  And
> realized
> > that Concurrent Programming is actually easier (although you do have the
> > added complexity of syntonization issues) .  The problem was not the
> > topic/idea, it was the language we use to think about it.
> >
> > Resnick noted that "In general, students appropriated the idea of agents
> > sending messages to one another quite easily."  Too bad we don't teach
> more
> > Smalltalk.
> > He identified three types of bugs specific to concurrent programming:
> >
> >    1. Problem Decomposition Bugs
> >    2. Synchronization Bugs
> >    3. Object Oriented Bugs
> >
> > *Problem Decomposition Bugs*
> > "These bugs arise out of students' difficulties decomposing problems into
> > actions to be performed concurrently by multiple agents."  Here there are
> > two types of decomposition:
> >
> >    1. functional decomposition - dividing a problem in to simpler
> >    sub-problems (what needs to be done)
> >    2. agency decomposition - dividing the functional pieces among
> different
> >    agents (who does it)
> >
> >
> > *Synchronization Bugs*
> >
> > "These bugs arise out of students' difficulties coordinating and
> > orchestrating the activities of multiple agents."
> > These bugs he divides into two type: Unintended Sequentiality and
> > Unintended Concurrency. In these cases the student expected Sequetiality
> > and got Concurrence (or vice versa).
> >
> > It seems that in designing Multi-Logo to deal with synchronization he
> > provided two mechanisms: ask and demand.  Where when you "ask" an agent
> > something (ex: flash light -  for 20 seconds) the request is queued up to
> > be executed in the order received. When you "demand" the agent interrupts
> > what is going on to perform the request (or it might simply put it at the
> > head of the queue, I am not sure).  It is interesting, at least to me,
> that
> > Scratch, developed later by Resnick and his team,  got rid of the ask and
> > demand and went with a "broadcast" "wait" and "do for X seconds" to allow
> > for synchronization.  I believe this simplifies and avoids a number of
> > problems for novice programmers.
> >
> > *Object Oriented Bugs*
> > "These bugs arise out of students' confusion among different types of
> > "objects"  Multi-Logo has multiple types of objects: agents, turtle, and
> on
> > the Lego Interface box (think early NXT) ports and sensors.  Part of this
> > confusion may have been the overloading of "halt" which for an agent,
> > Another quote for Guzial:
> >
> >    - " our current programming languages do not allow people to program
> the
> >    way that they think about the tasks"
> >    - Section: "Making tools better by shifting to Visual Programming"
> >    - "having students build their own visualizations had significant
> impact
> >    on those students’ learning."
> >
> >
> > *Resnick's Lessons Learned*
> > "It is a good idea for students to "play agent"--that is, act out what
> each
> > agent is supposed to do. This activity requires a group of students, each
> > playing the role of a different agent."  I really like this approach with
> > novices and often warn students "Step away from the computer and no one
> > will get hurt".  Having them act out the program and program each other
> is
> > a good way to do this.
> > In designing Multi-Logo he realized he did not go far enough
> > in parallelism: "An alternate approach, of course, is to change the
> design
> > of MultiLogo to match students' preconceptions. For example, I could
> > redesign MultiLogo agents so that each agent could do several things at
> the
> > same time, in line with students' expectations of "excessive
> parallelism."
> >  He later did have agents that can do several things at the same time.
> > He also discussed the idea of design the environment match the students
> > pre-conceptions. Would be interesting to find out what problems it solves
> > (and those it doesn't) and what new problems it creates.
> >
> >
> > FInally, for a real treat* *at some possibilities for a new programming
> > environment see this:
> >
> > Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle <http://vimeo.com/36579366> from
> > CUSEC<http://vimeo.com/cusec>
> >  on Vimeo <http://vimeo.com/>.
> >
> > References:
> > NOTE: If you have limited time, I would recommend reading (2) then (5),
> > then for a real treat watch the Brett Victor talk (7)
> > (1) Why Is It So Hard to Learn to Program - Mark Guzdial
> > (2) Children's Mental Models of Recursive LOGO Programs - D. Midian
> Kurland
> > and Roy D. Pea
> > (1985)<
> http://www.stanford.edu/~roypea/RoyPDF%20folder/A27_Kurland_Pea_85.pdf>
> > (3) Language Independent Conceptual "Bugs" in Novice Programming - Roy D.
> > Pea (1986) <
> http://www.stanford.edu/~roypea/RoyPDF%20folder/A28_Pea_86.pdf>
> > (4) The Buggy Path to the Development of Programming Expertise - Roy D.
> Pea
> > and Elliot Soloway
> > (1987)<
> http://www.stanford.edu/~roypea/RoyPDF%20folder/A32_Pea_etal_87.pdf>
> > (5) MultiLogo: A Study of Children and Concurrent Programming - Mitchel
> > Resnick <http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/MultiLogo.html> (1990)
> > (6) Programming Environments for Novices - Mark Guzdial
> > (2002)<http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/guzdial/uploads/18/novice-envs.pdf>
> > (7) Brett Victor - Inventing on Principle
> > (2012)<
> http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCkQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F36579366&ei=KsZNT67SJ4GCgwf1-Lm_Ag&usg=AFQjCNGHACfYpq0IFm1Krb2xBGWAF-_JLw&sig2=eGsjoGhKYkMHkr4HmZLCyw
> >
> >
>
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