mike on April 09, 2010 10:40 sez:

It's also possible that the entire idea is overly influenced by a generally Western notion that you either have ability or your don't, and there's not much to be done about it. This seems remarkably widespread in our attitudes about math[s], for example, where we accept without comment (or dissent) when people say "Oh, I'm just not a math person."

As has been reported about math education in Asian countries, and about music education in the UK, whatever "talent" a student might or might not have is only a weak determiner in how successful they are in those subjects. A far better predictor turns out to be an old-fashioned kind: how hard they work at it. Malcolm Gladwell (who, admittedly, is the epitome of a popularizer) notes that what might distinguish successful music students is not musical talent as such, but what he refers to as "a talent for practice" -- ie, motivation to practice and an instinct for (or instruction in) doing so effectively.

IOW, motivation and hard work are probably ultimately far more important than native ability. Of course, it doesn't hurt to be a "genius," but one generally discovers that geniuses have somewhere, at some time, put in a whole lotta work into their chosen field of endeavo[u]r.

Roberto Liffredo on April 10, 2010 18:03 sez:

Maybe I've always been in the "geek" side of the classroom, but I do not remember any of the people I was involved with that had not hacked at least a bit with some form of basic.

jim on April 13, 2010 10:12 sez:

I gave this idea a lot of bandwidth after reading your original post on the topic. My sense is that it really boils down to the idea of nurture versus nature - the idea that individuals carry along an inherent set of preferences or perhaps can evolve along the way.

Functionally, Denadi and Bornat found that their first set of tests were not predictive for people who had already been exposed to programming. So, they went back to the drawing board and have refined the test to capture patterns / modes of response that they believe are more predictive.

Intuitively, this seems "truthy" to me (who hasn't worked with someone with a decent academic background that was hopeless as a developer?), but at the same time, it seems to me that the predictive aspect results in too many "programmer positives" - which makes me think that the pattern matching aspect is probably more inate (see Baron-Cohen's E-S Theory and search engine the words "autism quotient" for a self assessment) in some, but teachable for most.

Someone would probably have to test a bunch of 5 year olds and then keep track of them through their academic careers to really sort this out.

Andrew on April 19, 2010 20:23 sez:

Expanding on the hypothesis of Gladwell's (via mike). Maybe an initial test of programming should be "Are you the type of person who is going to stay up late programming".

eg

"Explain the inherent plot flaw of 'The Terminator', ignoring the implausability of time travel and sentient computers."


Any lame answer like "I haven't seen it" disqualifies you from programming.

Alan on August 20, 2010 14:25 sez:

Maybe the best tests could be built by emulating the military aptitude tests. When I took such a test in 1975, I had the vast computer experience of having once watched a teletype print out a christmas tree of asterisks, and the significant electronics experience of having figured out that I could get distant FM stations from our family cable TV feed. (Oh yeah, lest I forget, I once plugged an 8-ohm speaker into a wall outlet because I wanted to hear what electricity sounded like.) The Air Force put me into electronics, and I am now an accomplished telecommunications engineer, having recently crosstrained after a long career as a proficient software engineer. I think they know something.