Boing Boing has this great post: Comfort with meaninglessness the key to good programmers.
Research in the UK on teaching computer science found three groups of students:
- People who answered the questions using different mental models for different questions.
- People who answered using a consistent model.
- People who didn't answer the questions at all.
Contrary to predictions that the more adaptive group (#1) would fair better, they found that the consistent group (#2) were more successful programmers.
Even better:
... single biggest predictor of likely aptitude for programming is a deep comfort with meaninglessness
Now I know why I enjoy programming so much.
Social science research is so much fun! As you might have expected, xkcd has the perfect strip for this (hat tip: comment #6):
