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Ask Slashdot: Best Certifications To Get? - Slashdot: "We teach about programming and expect that students will spontaneously learn to write from this collection of facts.

In language acquisition there is a hypothesis called the 'Input Hypothesis'. It states that *all* language acquisition comes from 'comprehensible input'. That is, if you hear or read language that you can understand based on what you already know and from context, you will acquire it. Explanation does not help you acquire language. I believe the same is true of programming. We should be immersing students in good code. We should be burying them in idiom after idiom after idiom, allowing them to acquire the ability to program without explanation.

Ask Slashdot: Best Certifications To Get? - Slashdot: "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing. The vast majority of programming is not conceptually difficult (contrary to what a lot of people would have you believe). We only make it difficult because we suck at writing. The vast majority of programmers aren't fluent, and don't even have a desire to be fluent. They don't read other people's code. They don't recognise or use idioms. They don't think *in the programming language*. Most code sucks because we have the fluency equivalent of 3 year olds trying to write a novel. And so our programs are needlessly complex.