To paraphrase Jaynes, philosophers can say anything they want, because they don’t have to do anything right.
The magic of coding, or in general creating something that does something, is that reality tests your ideas. Oh yeah, and you actually accomplish something outside of your head, or the heads of others at a cocktail party.
Coding is great in that the turnaround time for testing your ideas is so fast. The faster the feedback loop, the faster the learning.
Although the OP mentioned debugging, I’d stress and elaborate the point for people just learning to program. He says programming forces you to think. Particularly when you’re learning, or debugging, I’d say sometimes you need to stop trying to figure it out, and start just trying things out. Fiddle with it and see what happens. That’s the way to improve your model of how it works, so that next time you will have a better sense of what to do.
For some folks, having to click on a link is a trivial inconvenience, so here’s the relevant part:
As a colleague of the writer once remarked, ‘Philosophers are free to do whatever they please, because they don’t have to do anything right.’ But a responsible scientist does not have that freedom; he will not assert the truth of a general principle, and urge others to adopt it, merely on the strength of his own intuition.
To paraphrase Jaynes, philosophers can say anything they want, because they don’t have to do anything right.
The magic of coding, or in general creating something that does something, is that reality tests your ideas. Oh yeah, and you actually accomplish something outside of your head, or the heads of others at a cocktail party.
Coding is great in that the turnaround time for testing your ideas is so fast. The faster the feedback loop, the faster the learning.
Although the OP mentioned debugging, I’d stress and elaborate the point for people just learning to program. He says programming forces you to think. Particularly when you’re learning, or debugging, I’d say sometimes you need to stop trying to figure it out, and start just trying things out. Fiddle with it and see what happens. That’s the way to improve your model of how it works, so that next time you will have a better sense of what to do.
Do you know which page of Jaynes you are paraphrasing, by chance?
pg. 144, middle of the page, last paragraph before 5.8 Bayesian Jurisprudence
http://books.google.com/books?id=tTN4HuUNXjgC&pg=PA144
Normally I’d cut and paste the quote, but google books won’t let me copy, and I’m too lazy.
For some folks, having to click on a link is a trivial inconvenience, so here’s the relevant part:
Thanks. Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
Such is my laziness, that I didn’t pay attention to Jaynes’ elaboration to the quote, which is pretty good too.