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Saying programming is writing is like saying building something is 'speaking to materials'.

When you look at software, what you see is not a language, it is a machine. A machine that is presented in humanly understandable and communicable form, but nonetheless, something with a particular kind of underlying determinate structure.

Yes, the main part of the conclusion is the same: you have to learn by doing. But because software is design -- rational manipulation of objective 'material' -- knowledge about how it works is also an intrinsic part of doing it well.

Design means creating something through clear knowledge: we go with particular design ideas because we can predict their outcome and effect. This is the knowledge about that the article underestimates. We choose quicksort not simply because we have immersed ourselves in social norms, but significantly because it has been proven asymptotically fastest.

That kind of determinate knowledge that programming by nature can have is important. It is missing something to lump it in as just being like spoken language learning.




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