An anecdatum. The only construction set I had as a boy was lego, and my little sister played with it too. As far as I know, there was no feeling that it was my toy only. We’re five years apart so all my stuff got passed down or shared.
My sister’s very clever. We both did degrees in the same place, mine maths and hers archaeology.
She’s never shown the slightest interest in programming or maths, whereas I remember the thunderbolt-strike of seeing my first computer program at ten years old, long before I’d ever actually seen a computer. I nagged my parents obsessively for one until they gave in, and maths and programming have been my hobby and my profession ever since.
I distinctly remember trying to show Liz how to use my computer, and she just wasn’t interested.
My parents are entirely non-mathematical. They’re both educated people, but artsy. Mum must have some natural talent, because she showed me how to do fractions before I went to school, but I think she dropped maths at sixteen. I think it’s fair to say that Dad hates and fears it. Neither of them knew the first thing about computers when I was little. They just weren’t a thing that people had in the 70s, any more than hovercraft were.
Every attempt my school made to teach programming was utterly pointless for me, I either already knew what they were trying to teach or got it in a few seconds.
The only attempts to teach programming that have ever held my attention or shown me anything interesting are SICP, and the algorithms and automata courses on Coursera, all of which I passed with near-perfect scores, and did for fun.
So from personal experience I believe in ‘natural talent’ in programming. And I don’t believe it’s got anything to do with upbringing, except that our house was quiet and educated.
You’d have had to work quite hard to stop me becoming a programmer. And I don’t think anything in my background was in favour of me becoming one. And anything that was should have favoured my sister too.
I’ve got two friends who are talented maths graduates, and somehow both of them had managed to get through their first degrees without ever writing programs. Both of them asked me to teach them.
The first one I’ve made several attempts with. He sort-of gets it, but he doesn’t see why you’d want to. A couple of times he’s said ‘Oh yes, I get it, sort of like experimental mathematics’. But any time he gets a problem about numbers he tries to solve it with pen and paper, even when it looks obvious to me that a computer will be a profitable attack.
The second, I spent about two hours showing him how to get to “hello world” in python and how to fetch a web page. Five days later he shows me a program he’s written to screen-scrape betfair and place trades automatically when it spots arbitrage opportunities. I was literally speechless.
So I reckon that whatever-makes-you-a-mathematician and whatever-makes-you-a-programmer might be different things too. Which is actually a bit weird. They feel the same to me.
An anecdatum. The only construction set I had as a boy was lego, and my little sister played with it too. As far as I know, there was no feeling that it was my toy only. We’re five years apart so all my stuff got passed down or shared.
My sister’s very clever. We both did degrees in the same place, mine maths and hers archaeology.
She’s never shown the slightest interest in programming or maths, whereas I remember the thunderbolt-strike of seeing my first computer program at ten years old, long before I’d ever actually seen a computer. I nagged my parents obsessively for one until they gave in, and maths and programming have been my hobby and my profession ever since.
I distinctly remember trying to show Liz how to use my computer, and she just wasn’t interested.
My parents are entirely non-mathematical. They’re both educated people, but artsy. Mum must have some natural talent, because she showed me how to do fractions before I went to school, but I think she dropped maths at sixteen. I think it’s fair to say that Dad hates and fears it. Neither of them knew the first thing about computers when I was little. They just weren’t a thing that people had in the 70s, any more than hovercraft were.
Every attempt my school made to teach programming was utterly pointless for me, I either already knew what they were trying to teach or got it in a few seconds.
The only attempts to teach programming that have ever held my attention or shown me anything interesting are SICP, and the algorithms and automata courses on Coursera, all of which I passed with near-perfect scores, and did for fun.
So from personal experience I believe in ‘natural talent’ in programming. And I don’t believe it’s got anything to do with upbringing, except that our house was quiet and educated.
You’d have had to work quite hard to stop me becoming a programmer. And I don’t think anything in my background was in favour of me becoming one. And anything that was should have favoured my sister too.
And another anecdote:
I’ve got two friends who are talented maths graduates, and somehow both of them had managed to get through their first degrees without ever writing programs. Both of them asked me to teach them.
The first one I’ve made several attempts with. He sort-of gets it, but he doesn’t see why you’d want to. A couple of times he’s said ‘Oh yes, I get it, sort of like experimental mathematics’. But any time he gets a problem about numbers he tries to solve it with pen and paper, even when it looks obvious to me that a computer will be a profitable attack.
The second, I spent about two hours showing him how to get to “hello world” in python and how to fetch a web page. Five days later he shows me a program he’s written to screen-scrape betfair and place trades automatically when it spots arbitrage opportunities. I was literally speechless.
So I reckon that whatever-makes-you-a-mathematician and whatever-makes-you-a-programmer might be different things too. Which is actually a bit weird. They feel the same to me.