CP4E was Re: Deitel and Deitel Book...

[Geoff Gerrietts]

Quoting Christopher Encapera (ChrisE at lantech.com):
> [...]
> A child, or adult, is inherently flexible when it comes to syntax,
> but a computer is (inherently) not.
> [...]
> Thus, the need for jumping right into syntax immediately (if you
> want to produce anything even remotely meaningful)

A point well taken, but also note that when we set out to learn a new
language, the most effective teaching methodologies rely on pointing
out the patterns in that language very early on: you learn to
conjugate verbs, learn proper forms of address, etc. Later, you learn
more complicated variations on the patterns (past tense, past perfect
tense, possessives, prepositional phrases, etc).

Whereas the five-year-old will learn to speak by absorbing the
language "in the wild", the student will try to apprehend it by
absorbing the patterns, then learning the limits of those patterns
through application and introduction of new patterns.

These techniques are naturally more successful when the student is
immersed in an environment rich with opportunity to encounter those
limits.

> Also concerning logic, I think it would be (perhaps) more accurate
> to say that people think (and solve most of their problems) at a
> higher level of abstraction - more in the realm of "meanings" and
> "relationships" where many different kinds of knowledge and
> inter-connectedness come into play.

I think you're right. I'm trying to oversimplify intuition, or maybe
oversimplify what we're really talking about by calling it intuition.
Logic is both less subjective and less forgiving, and it operates at a
much more concrete level of thought.

--G.

-- 
Geoff Gerrietts                <geoff at gerrietts net> 
"I have read your book and much like it." --Moses Hadas