[Edu-sig] Now I went and did it.

[Michal Wallace]

On Sun, 8 Oct 2000, Jason Cunliffe wrote:

> I find myself become more of an instant nutcase than testcase when I look at
> even this trivial example:
> 
> (define (area-of-disk r)
>   (* 3.14 (* r r)))
> 
> A voice inside my head starts saying "No. Stop no!"
>
> I wonder to how many people react differently from me, and what the real
> pre-conditions are whereby one says instead  "oh yes of course! :-)"


Do you know about modalities? Kinesthetic/Visual/Auditory and all
that? I'd venture that you tend to rely on Auditory-Internal-Digital
thinking a lot.. in other words, you think to yourself in words.. (As
you demonstrate above..  "voice", "one says", plus you read a lot,
etc..)

LISPish syntax doesn't really lend itself well to thinking in words.
At least not english ones..  Python does. That's why it's "executable
psuedocode" :)

Now, if you'd grown up speaking lojban ( http://www.lojban.org/ )
you might find programming in scheme much more natural..

LISP/scheme work better thinking visually, at least for me.. But
then I'm not a lisp or scheme programmer.. :)

> Are there consistent universal patterns of recognition and action which are
> independent from language culture personality? How does learning play into
> this.. Where does early computer programming belong?

No clue, but I've got a book on my to-read list that deals with a lot
of this.. "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker..

Cheers,

- Michal
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