Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Judy Perry]

As I've spent a good chunk of time reading some of these, it would seem
that novice programmers try to 'memorize' indeed, but lack comprehension
as traditional programming languages involve using the 'black box' model
of a computer, whereas scripting languages, code reuse and the like
support actual comprehension because the computer is now a 'clear box' in
which the programmer's actions are translated into concrete and
comprehensible outcomes.  This assists transfer.

Expert programmers engage in pattern-recognition in that they do not need
to study each line of code and understand it sequentially in debugging but
rather look for a predictable pattern that is either present or absent and
which jumps out at them.

I can supply references if anyone's interested...

Judy

On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, jbv wrote:

> AFAIR some studies in experimental psychology & ergonomics in the
> early 80's showed that beginners & experimented programmers think
> and mostly memorize algorithms in very different ways :
> - beginners tend to memorize an algo in a specific prog. language
> - experienced programmers memorize algos outside any prog. language
>
> I don't know if this remark is on or off topic, although according to these
> studies, one might assume that experienced programmers from different
> countries and with different native languages (USA, french, japanese...)
> don't bother much about the language used to code, but focus on the
> algorithm itself and perhaps think about (analyze & solve) a problem in
> a similar way...