Is Programming Teachable?

Today I came across an older article at Coding Horror called Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats. It talks about some research that seems to show that people need a certain mindset to be able to understand programming and that without this mindset programming isn't teachable at all.

All teachers of programming find that their results display a 'double hump'. It is as if there are two populations: those who can [program], and those who cannot [program], each with its own independent bell curve. […]
In particular, most people can't learn to program: between 30% and 60% of every university computer science department's intake fail the first programming course.

After reading the article I was about to agree, because it somehow matches with hat I experienced at school and university. But then I thought “what creates that programmer's mindset?”. Nobody is born as a programmer. So I wondered how it happened that I became one.

I grew up in East Germany, so my first contacts with computers do probably differ from those others in my age made on the other side of the wall. Home electronics where extremely expensive and home computers simply didn't exist.

My first contact with computers was through West Germany television. In about 1986 (I was 7 then) a 13 episode documentary called “Wer hat Angst vorm kleinen Chip?”¹⁾ aired and I watched it together with my dad every weekend. It basically explained in layman's terms how computers worked and how they would change the future. I doubt that I did understand much of it, but I loved the show.

Of course I was still far from being able to access a computer my self. But I think it wasn't much later that my parents were starting to work with computers at their work. I still remember them talking about “Redabas”. “Redabas” was in fact a renamed copy of dBASE “obtained” by the GDR. Of course I didn't knew anything about it, but since it was a topic at the dinner table, computers where on my mind.

I also remember computers being a topic in children's magazines in the GDR. There was at least one Frösi issue with a DIY cardboard calculation machine. Unfortunately I don't have any of that stuff anymore.

I got my first computer book in 1988 (being 9 then). It was called “Der Sprung in die Computerwelt”²⁾. I still have it. It was a reprint of a book that was first released in 1984 in West Germany.

This book really introduced me to very basics of how computers and programming work and even taught me a few lines of BASIC.

But I with the lack of access to a computer, I couldn't really do much with that knowledge. At least my mom once took me with her to work so I could try some of the BASIC example on her Robotron.

We got our first own PC in 1990 after Germany's reunification. But it then took quite a while til I really started to code things…

However I this brings me back to the initial article. I'm certainly in the “can program hump” – but not because I was born there, but because my parents made computers interesting to me in an early age and encouraged my curiosity.

I'd love to hear from you guys. Were computers part of your childhood? Did it help you with programming later on?

Tags:: programming,; education,; children,; history

Similar posts:

¹⁾ “Who is afraid of the little Chip?”

²⁾ “The jump into the computer world”

Posted on Sunday, December the 20th 2009 (9 months ago).

If a child likes connect-the-dots, there is a huge chance to become a software developer.

2009-12-20 02:46:20

Ricardo David

This is an interesting topic. I was born in America and my Father purchased an att ibm clone in the late 80's. He used it for work, so my self and my brothers were not allowed to use it much, but since my father's office was in the house, we occasionally used it to play text-based adventure games. The first computer that I really got to use frequently was a Radio Shack Tandy "lap-top" called such because you could put it on your lap. It was with this computer and at the age of 11 that I truly began to delve into programming. I wrote lots of stuff in batch and basic. My first real "program" was a utility filter in assembly. After that, my grandfather bought us a 386 desktop. At that time by family moved to the former soviet republic of Kazakhstan where my father ran a business school and later a k-12 elementary school and medical clinic under a humanitarian organization. Here me and my friends explored the vast and still un-tamed world of the internet. My and a good friend ran a few BBS's on the FidoNet and bribed isp employees to give us access to faster internet connections :) I started programming for the web at around 15 and I haven't turned back.

I have to agree with the studies that say that not everyone can be a programmer. My first real programming class at the university began with 25 students and ended with eight..of whom maybe 6 passed. I also have spent a lot of time talking with students in computer science programs and many are frustrated with ideas and concepts that seem to just be natural for me. I have also seen these same students succeed and do well once I explained it to them.

What does it take to be a computer programmer? Are we born? Or do we become? At the end of the day, I believe that with proper instruction anyway can learn how to program. But unless they have proper head for it (for lack of a better term..it is 2 am for me) they will not really be above average at it and they will spend just as much time looking at the clock as the screen. That is to say, they will not love it as much as those who coding is a part of the soul.

I met a man once who was a programmer like me. He once even worked for microsoft. He confessed that when he got home, he did anything but use a computer.For me, it is 2 in the morning on a Sunday and I am still sitting in front of my computer. And yes, I am coding :)

2009-12-20 08:23:28

David Duggins

I was 14 or 15 when I got my first computer. A Vic-20. Without any games and even without any mass storage. So I had to program everything from the very beginning. And next day I had to write the same program again. After the Vic-20 I got Commodore 64, Amiga 1000 and a Amiga 3000 before I got my first PC.

And yes. with all these machines I mostly did programming. Without any formal training I now work as a programmer. Last 17 years. From mainframes to Linux servers. From FORTRAN to Java (and php, Perl, and so on). And I do program as a hobby also.

All my friends who got a Vic-20 same time as I never got into programming. So maybe you need to have "that something".

2009-12-20 16:22:33

Otto Vainio

My mom got her first pc 1992 when i was 7. So i think computers in fact were a part of my childhood so that i am in the “can program hump” today...

2009-12-20 22:29:35

Strubbl

Even though I got my first computer with 15 I began to develop interest in programming when I was around 22. This was the time when I met Linux for the first time. What started as an interest about building my own website using CSS/HTML quickly turned into a big hunger to get to learn it all. So far I've had contact with Perl/PHP/Python/C/Bash/Javascript/Lua/Supercollider - but I know all of them only to a certain extent (depending on what I'm using it for), and I think I'll never get to master on language like a real programmer does.

At the end of the day I'm mainly an audio engineer who likes to mess with computers in his spare time.

Maybe that "something" you're looking for is just proactive curiosity.

2009-12-21 09:54:17

Michael Klier

I do think there is an innate talent. Although no one is born programming, I can remember having an algorithmic bent from a very early age. For example, I think I found chemistry fascinating, early on, primarily because it brought out the idea of the world as a partly mechanical thing that could be managed.

From another perspective, I once tried to teach a class of elementary education majors how to balance their checkbooks. It was a humbling experience for all of us. They were not stupid people, but most had an extremely difficult time with the most basic concepts involved. So this little algorithm, "take bank balance, add in deposits you know about and they don't, subtract debits you know about and they don't", was just impossible for many of them. I came away feeling strongly that this was at least partly innate.

2009-12-26 22:29:48

Jim Fickett

I was about 6 when I my dad first showed me a very simple (Hello World alike) program in BASIC. I was a fan of computer games already, and I enjoyed doing LEGOs and Mechanos so I enjoyed a lot building stuff. Seeing that possibility of limitless creation was kind of magical, and I guess that falling in love with programming from such an early age probably helps, but I do think that already liking LEGO-like stuff was a great motivator too...

2010-01-04 14:28:45

Miguel

Hi Andi,

programming is like playing guitar. Some pepople are just created to play, and some other did not hear any difference between sounds, and cannot play, because they do not understand and do not like that. With programming is even worse because it requires uderstanding much abstraction.

In fact, I am teaching programming and numerical methods - and I agree, there is large part of population which cannot understand programming and there is no way to teach them C or even Pascal. Fortunately, there are many people who were just born to program ;)

Some people love computers. For others it is like a celluar phone, they do not understand that computers have souls ...

Best,
Dianthus

2010-01-23 05:08:55

dianthus

I love computers.I took my first programming class in COBOL and BASIC and barely passed both classes. I could write short simple programming code but anything complex was beyond me. I continued through the years to learn programming. My last class in programming was in Visual Basic. I passed because I found I can put other people's code together and make it work. I still cannot code from scratch.

2010-03-24 17:24:59

Dot Witt

yes,
i think that nobody is born programmer, but the capability to learn and innovate in any programming languages depends on person to person.I first time touched computers in my B.Tech. they were 486 pcs in our engg college. so interest in programming is directly related to your interaction with computers.as early as you will use a computer your programming interest will also developed and you will see yourselves ahead of others in that field of programming.presently i am an asst. professor and trying my best to teach and cultivate programming skills in my students.

Anurag tewari

2010-07-30 06:22:09

Anurag Tewari