>Well lots of people can read and write, but few people are able to write a good novel.
That's exactly my point. Coming up with a great story is very difficult. Writing it down is trivial in comparison.
>Everyone I know who isn't necessarily a software engineer but has basic programming skills has benefited from that knowledge.
I completely agree. It's very useful and should be taught in school just like maths is taught in school. Maybe it should be taught as part of maths.
My point is that the cognitive difficulty of formal modelling is on a completely different level than that of transcribing words. We should adjust our expectations accordingly.
I agree but consider that Homer, one of the greatest storytellers of all time, was most likely illiterate. I've also met people who are outstanding at computer science but struggle with coding. I just think they're different skills and the people who can do both know how smart and important they are. It's sometimes a source of discouragement when the aim is to teach coding as a form of literacy. I read a story once where this company a few decades ago tricked a group of secretaries into learning to code LISP because they didn't tell these women that what they were doing was programming. Similar to the airline ticket salespeople who used to do things like edit raw memory in their sabre terminals, which is something most programmers today would believe they're not smart enough to do. It's amazing how clever people are at figuring things out if we avoid thinking about technology labor with the classic division of labor assembly line model.
I seem to remember a similar using LISP story - not tricking people but they gave sales team / admin lisp tools because they did not have time to code the "proper ones" - and the employees (women) rebelled when people tried to take them away. I want to say it was ... wrote much of netscape then ran a nightclub ... memory like a sieve I have.
> I read a story once where this company a few decades ago tricked a group of secretaries into learning to code LISP because they didn't tell these women that what they were doing was programming.
That's exactly my point. Coming up with a great story is very difficult. Writing it down is trivial in comparison.
>Everyone I know who isn't necessarily a software engineer but has basic programming skills has benefited from that knowledge.
I completely agree. It's very useful and should be taught in school just like maths is taught in school. Maybe it should be taught as part of maths.
My point is that the cognitive difficulty of formal modelling is on a completely different level than that of transcribing words. We should adjust our expectations accordingly.