Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Jeff Higgins Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: About java program. Date: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 20:40:46 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 27 Message-ID: References: <324f929f-772e-4004-81e1-6b454cdae794@googlegroups.com> <19wnriq53qxel.u9rt8wy6z52g.dlg@40tude.net> <6db4a3e5-285c-485c-affc-7891f92f4e5a@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 00:32:58 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx05.eternal-september.org; posting-host="6b9e92482af47766954d85fb77d372f5"; logging-data="29262"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18XZpnSfYN/vAPNMfT7PiI4KUJXeg65aZQ=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130529 Icedove/17.0.5 In-Reply-To: Cancel-Lock: sha1:WCQYJdbRNRN+AlP9S8p4pJmYC/A= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:24703 On 07/07/2013 08:21 PM, Jeff Higgins wrote: > A logical mind, not a programming mind: Psychology of a professional > end-user "For his part, J. accepted his responsibility in part as an educational one, providing C. with valuable skills that would enable her to be more effective when carrying out future programming work. Given that the two had comparable professional seniority, this educational objective often amounted to a clash of alternative intellectual styles. In the educational approach taken by J., the future development needs described by C. could be achieved more effectively by adopting more abstract analysis and problem-solving strategies – strategies that are completely characteristic of programming work. However, as described in the Attention Investment model (Blackwell 2002), abstract strategies can be expensive ones, requiring greater initial investment of attention, with potentially low return, or even negative return. When pursuing the educational objectives in his collaborative relationship with C., J. was therefore acting as an advocate of a more abstract strategy, attempting to persuade her that she should adjust the attention investment decision factors that she already applied. In many of their conversations, C. resisted this advice, saying that she would prefer to make progress on the specific, concrete, problem that had motivated the project in the first place. For his part, J. tried to persuade her that it would be in her long-term interest to address not just this particular problem, but the general category of problems of this type, or indeed the general capabilities to be acquired by gaining experience of the most general capabilities of the programming language. "