A long time ago I read something about a computer science teacher that had trouble teaching people how to program. Some people “just got it” and others just couldn’t get it.
He tried giving a test beforehand to predict who would succeed and who would fail. He found that a few questions highly correlated with ability, even though they had nothing to do with programming. If I remember correctly, they involved the ability to step through the state of a system through time. Which is basically what programming is.
That doesn’t necessarily imply that programming ability is innate, but if it is a skill, it’s learned outside of school.
He went on the argue that this correlates with libertarianism. That political ideologies aren’t just differences of opinion, but fundamentally different approaches to thinking about problems and organizing systems.
He went on the argue that this correlates with libertarianism. That political ideologies aren’t just differences of opinion, but fundamentally different approaches to thinking about problems and organizing systems.
I see an article every six months or so claiming something like this, though the libertarian angle is a new twist—the usual claim is that conservatism implies an authoritarian personality. Every time I’ve bothered to look into one in any depth the data has turned out to be exceptionally weak, or confounded in grossly, painfully obvious ways (e.g. by failing to control for age or income).
This is flattering to a different demographic, but I’m no less skeptical.
A long time ago I read something about a computer science teacher that had trouble teaching people how to program. Some people “just got it” and others just couldn’t get it.
He tried giving a test beforehand to predict who would succeed and who would fail. He found that a few questions highly correlated with ability, even though they had nothing to do with programming. If I remember correctly, they involved the ability to step through the state of a system through time. Which is basically what programming is.
That doesn’t necessarily imply that programming ability is innate, but if it is a skill, it’s learned outside of school.
He went on the argue that this correlates with libertarianism. That political ideologies aren’t just differences of opinion, but fundamentally different approaches to thinking about problems and organizing systems.
I see an article every six months or so claiming something like this, though the libertarian angle is a new twist—the usual claim is that conservatism implies an authoritarian personality. Every time I’ve bothered to look into one in any depth the data has turned out to be exceptionally weak, or confounded in grossly, painfully obvious ways (e.g. by failing to control for age or income).
This is flattering to a different demographic, but I’m no less skeptical.