[Edu-sig] Age groups

[Steve Morris]

Gerrit Holl writes:
 > Ivan Van Laningham wrote on 949667945:
 > > Guido van Rossum wrote:
 > > > Steve Morris wrote:
 > > > > That's funny. My experience was quite different. When I first saw
 > > > > objects and classes it was like a relevation from God. They seemed
 > > > > intuitively obvious and the answer to my prayers. I wonder if this is
 > > > > a right brain/left brain thing or something.
 > > > 
 > > > Gerrit is definitely a left-brain type of person :-)
 > > 
 > > We ought to make up posters advertizing Python, and put Gerrit's picture
 > > on them.
 > 
 > Sorry, I don't understand you both. Am I left-brain?
 > What does left-brain has to do with object oriented design?

I can't speak for Guido and Ivan's follow ups but as the author of the
original reply to your post I was pondering why some people find
objects a difficult subject and others find them obvious and
intuitive. That's quite a dicotomy. There doesn't seem to be anyone in
the middle on this subject. It is clearly not an issue of programming
ability because senior experienced programmers come down on both
sides.

Since left brain and right brain people are often categorized by their
different problem solving strategies I was wondering out loud if this
particular problem solving technique (OOP) exemplified some of those
differences. 

If you are interested in this subject and determining which category
you fall in you can probably find many references on the WWW. Actually
left/right brain has been replaced with a more sophisticated breakdown
defined by the Myers Briggs profile. Left/right brain turned out to be
a little too simplistic to be generally useful.

A quick synopsis is that left brain people are described as rational
and pedantic with right brained people being intuitive and artistic.
As I said...  a major simplification.

I find the suggestion interesting that experienced programmers often
have more difficulties with objects than beginners. That isn't my
personal experience but I have heard it said many times.

BTW this topic may seem a little off point except that we need to
teach people with different learning strategies. There is a tendancy
of programmer types to use left brain teaching techniques and thus
lose half their audience out of the gate. Anyone who has ever sat in
front of a room full of young students knows that there are as many
learning strategies as there are students. CP4E needs to be sensitive
to this or it will be one more also ran strategy.