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Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 32, No. 251. Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London Hosted by King's Digital Lab www.dhhumanist.org Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org Date: 2018-12-06 21:03:05+00:00 From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca Subject: Teaching Coding, Inculcating Care for Craft Willard A short accessible piece by Joe Morgan on the question of whether to teach coding to children has appeared in Slate. One of its themes is about cultivating and appreciation for quality.Of course, getting something working is just the first step of building software. The next step is to make code clear, reusable, and neat. Once, early in my career, I wrote a feature and gave it to a senior developer for review. He took one look at my sloppy spacing, mismatched lines, and erratic naming conventions and just said, Do it again. It was working. The syntax was valid. It was still wrong. Good coders dont just get something to work. They want it to be good. That feeling of quality is the hardest thing for many developers to master. Well-designed code feels good to work with, and ugly code will make developers involuntarily cringe. The best developers learn to fuse abstract logic with the sensitivity of an artist. Learning to trust that aesthetic feeling is as much a part of development as any algorithm or coding pattern.https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/12/against-teaching-kids-to-code-creativity-problem-solving.html -- Francois Lachance Scholar-at-large http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance https://berneval.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/ Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php
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