Comments for Psychology of Programming

Comment on Psychology of Perl talk links by Zbigniew Lukasiak

Zbigniew Lukasiak — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:26:29 +0000

I am just looking at the Update on the Natural Programming Project video – and wow – there is so much surprising info there! In particular create-set-call versus required params – this goes very much against the trend of ‘immutable objects’ (although it should be possible to reconcile those two) – and yet it feels true.

Comment on The double hump of programming classes by Cay Horstmann

Cay Horstmann — Sun, 30 May 2010 14:36:54 +0000

Do you have any evidence that OOP is to blame? In my experience, having taught objects early, late, and not at all, beginning students tend to fall behind in the same place: loops. Simple linear traversals are ok, but once you go beyond the point where the standard loops can be tweaked, a good percentage of the class has a very hard time. And that complaint is reiterated by instructors in the more advanced courses (”What do you guys do in CS1? The students that come into my class still can’t program loops!”) and even in job interviews (Google for FizzBuzz for some amusing blogs).

Comment on Ending The Long Quiet by Trevor

Trevor — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:24:09 +0000

Ah, so can I say that what you are after are ideas about what to write because what you have become interested in at the moment is the relationship between the psychology of programmers as it figures in the HR process, something you want to safely steer clear of? In which case, how about something more about how programmers generate innovative ideas as opposed to reusing safe, well explored ones?
I find forcing my ideas into a different media helps as in the other media we have different expectations and constraints. For example, as a novice programmer but experienced innovator elsewhere I push programming ideas back and forth between Javascript and PHP, and then into photographs, graphs and blogs – and back. Presumably you have some two way relationship between Perl and your blogs, so do you find this relationship helps you in your programming? Does this give you some edge over programmers who keep their programming more separate from other parts of their life?

Comment on Does code base structure follow organization structure? by Trevor

Trevor — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:47:06 +0000

Well, organization and code structure could be similar if the people creating the organization’s hierarchy are also the same kind of people doing the employing, or at least managing the things that determine whether employees stay with the organization or leave. The chances are, though, that at any time there will be a mix of employees at least to some extent trying to reproduce the type of code structure in which they believe.

Whether this would be a good or bad thing, in my opinion, is whether the customer can accept the product. Even though most of the code might be transparent to the customer, when it comes time to talk about new features one might find that a hierarchically structured code lacks the flexibility to match the changing needs of a customer with a more flat structured organization. And vice versa. In terms of business success as a supplier, it might be worth having on board people capable of understanding the essential need in people for hierarchical, or flat, structures so that the code produced does not lock out the other type of structure.

Comment on Accelerate your Perl learning 2: From novice to adept by Trevor

Trevor — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:12:02 +0000

I would say that studying the documentation is one way to get to the next level, but only if your brain is wired that way that you can absorb vast quantities of data. When I learn a new computer language I first read half a book on the language, play around to make sure I am able to reproduce the grammar well enough to get it to work, and then use Google and assume that something probably exists that does the kind of think I want to do. This may produce the answer I need, or it may not and in which case I either learn why not or find no answer. If I discover why something does not work, I rework my concept of the language, while if I find no answer I am probably attempting something new and this may either be a good or bad thing, it might lead to success or having to find another concept to deal with whatever I am attempting to do.
The point is that I am not a specialist in a single subject, my skills are not high craft in programming, but I do use programming well enough to demonstrate where a design should be going. Therefore, is a good programmer one with excellent code skills or one with excellent code conceptual design skills? Are all programmers able to deploy both skill types equally well, and do they need to?
My point is that we might find that the code-skill programmer will progress successfully through the documentation, while the conceptual design programmer may use it as little more than a refined lucky dip. For the latter, a good resource may be nothing more than a piece of information that opens a doorway, and this information might come from anywhere, any field, any discipline.

Comment on Objects and your brain: Why do we love object-oriented programming so? by Radian Programming Language » Blog Archive » Verb- versus noun-based models in cognitive psychology

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:59:13 +0000

[...] the blog Psychology of Programming, these excerpts from a 1995 paper on object-oriented programming published in Human-Computer Interaction have some fascinating comments from cognitive psychology [...]

Comment on Accelerate your Perl learning by Accelerate your Perl learning 2: From novice to adept | Psychology of Programming

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:40:22 +0000

[...] stated in an article some time back that a challenge in learning is that the knowledge setting experts apart from novices isn’t explicitly known by either [...]

Comment on The Great Perl Comeback? by steve

steve — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:05:10 +0000

I would like to interview some of the Perl programmers from the 1800’s from the graph! Since that’s quite improbable, it’s quite probable that they’re immortal hackers with PDP-11 beards!

Comment on The Great Perl Comeback? by Alexandr Ciornii

Alexandr Ciornii — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:45:53 +0000

I would not call it comeback – Perl was never on decline. Relatively to other languages – yes, but absolutely – never. Absolute numbers raise every year (except from late 2008, where all languages started to decline).

Comment on The Great Perl Comeback? by john napiorkowski

john napiorkowski — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:50:49 +0000

I’m not sure if the Japan originated searches are related to outsourcing. Perl is really big in Japan it seems. Quite a few Ironman blogs are Japanese for example. The India trend is a tough one to figure. Could be outsourcing, but that’s not necessarily an indication of new development.