Just trying to go back to the original topic—point is that playing games can’t be that bad. Maybe I would have done just as well if I spent that time watching TV instead, but subjectively I feel like I did learn mental skills from gaming. Obviously this is hard to prove, but I don’t think the common perception that gaming is completely worthless except as entertainment is actually true. I don’t have any hard evidence in favour but most people who criticize games don’t have any hard evidence against either—the only thing I’ve seen is that playing a large amount of games can harm school performance because it displaces homework, which is presumably true of any hobby taken to excess.
The Starcraft editor is not famous for being a terrific programming environment or good pedagogy. You’re confusing cause and effect here, I think...
It’s not a terrific programming environment but since it was a game I loved I was motivated to get over my initial frustrations (which were high), which might not have happened if I’d just idly tried some dry tutorial. Potentially specialized programming games could be better for this specific task, but I might never have picked up such a thing by myself (I was intimidated by the concept of programming at that age). You’re right that the direction of causation isn’t certain—the other way would be that I just happen to have the special programming sauce that isn’t dependent on intelligence alone (the existence of which hasn’t been ruled out yet AFAIK). At any rate I couldn’t have learned the same thing just from reading books (which I also did a lot of back then) and certainly I wasn’t about to go through SICP in my leisure time regardless.
Anyway this comment thread is way too deep and rambling so I’m just going to state a point succinctly and try to shut up:
Unlike many people, I don’t believe that leisure reading is dominant over videogame playing in the sense that the optimal allocation for learning is 100% reading and 0% playing. (Focused learning can be more effective than both if the person has the energy and motivation to spare). As far I’ve seen there is no good hard evidence for or against this.
Just trying to go back to the original topic—point is that playing games can’t be that bad. Maybe I would have done just as well if I spent that time watching TV instead, but subjectively I feel like I did learn mental skills from gaming. Obviously this is hard to prove, but I don’t think the common perception that gaming is completely worthless except as entertainment is actually true. I don’t have any hard evidence in favour but most people who criticize games don’t have any hard evidence against either—the only thing I’ve seen is that playing a large amount of games can harm school performance because it displaces homework, which is presumably true of any hobby taken to excess.
It’s not a terrific programming environment but since it was a game I loved I was motivated to get over my initial frustrations (which were high), which might not have happened if I’d just idly tried some dry tutorial. Potentially specialized programming games could be better for this specific task, but I might never have picked up such a thing by myself (I was intimidated by the concept of programming at that age). You’re right that the direction of causation isn’t certain—the other way would be that I just happen to have the special programming sauce that isn’t dependent on intelligence alone (the existence of which hasn’t been ruled out yet AFAIK). At any rate I couldn’t have learned the same thing just from reading books (which I also did a lot of back then) and certainly I wasn’t about to go through SICP in my leisure time regardless.
Anyway this comment thread is way too deep and rambling so I’m just going to state a point succinctly and try to shut up:
Unlike many people, I don’t believe that leisure reading is dominant over videogame playing in the sense that the optimal allocation for learning is 100% reading and 0% playing. (Focused learning can be more effective than both if the person has the energy and motivation to spare). As far I’ve seen there is no good hard evidence for or against this.