Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?
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Text is Keeping Kids from Coding
We ran into a big blocker when designing SpriteBox Coding, a learn-to-code game for kids ages 5+. For some kids, code was simply…
I'm sure this will devolve into some stupid "only text == programming!!!!!" argument from the morons on this forum, but in the meantime let's all appreciate how this company actually tests its products with its target audience and iterates based on the results.
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@blakeyrat said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
I'm sure this will devolve into some stupid "only text == programming!!!!!" argument from the morons on this forum
As long as you are going in to this with a good faith assumption of good intentions I don't see what could possibly go wrong...
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Interesting, but it makes sense especially for a target age where reading isn't necessarily natural yet.
I wonder why they went with C style syntax with the braces though. That seems like something that's likely to cause a bit of confusion unless it's introduced carefully
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@blakeyrat And yet even they want to slowly switch it over to teaching kids text-based Swift.
It does make me kind of wonder why, if their icons, at least the ones they show, can be used perfectly for the same thing. Though I guess having everyone use different icons would be awful...
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@jaloopa said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
especially for a target age where reading isn't necessarily natural yet
Yeah, but to me the fascinating part is that even adults thought it was more complicated when you use text. I blame hollywood: typing things into a terminal brings up images of "l33t hackerz" and makes it sound harder than it is.
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From the article:
We ran into a big blocker when designing SpriteBox Coding, a learn-to-code game for kids ages 5+. For some kids, code was simply unapproachable.
Don't feel bad. For some (read: the majority of) adults, code is simply unapprochable.
Problem is, many newcomers, kids and adults alike, believe that code is inherently complex simply because it looks complex.
Sometimes looks can be deceiving. This is not one of those times. Code is inherently complex, because it's used to solve complex problems. (Anyone can write a hello world, but the sort of real-life issue you'd want to solve by writing a computer program is going to be something complicated to get right.)
We couldn’t believe it. From our perspective, we’d simplified the code to what looks like plain English. When we asked parents what they imagined the target age group for the app to be, we got responses that estimated ages 9, 10 and up- much older than the demographic we wanted to hit.
That actually sounds about right. I started coding (in Applesoft BASIC) at age 8. I'm not sure I'd have been any good at the concepts involved much earlier than that.
It dawned on us that, for some people, the problem was simply that text itself was intimidating. It felt somewhat silly, and yet, learning textual code was the mental blocker for a good portion of our playtesters.
Coding is hard because text is scary.
No, coding is hard because it's solving hard problems.
We wondered if we could model SpriteBox Coding similarly. We would keep the early game icons-only…
… but transition to textual code later. Icons would simply be “phased out”.
Interesting idea. But will it work?
The response to this version was pronouncedly more positive. Playtesters felt less intimidated and were engaged longer. Little by little, SpriteBox swaps out all icons for instructions written in text format.
So why does this work? We believe that by focusing on icons first, players don’t have to juggle learning two things at once, instead learning programming logic first and textual representation after. Moreover, when text code is introduced, players’ previous knowledge of the game’s mechanics keeps their confidence up as they solve familiar puzzles.
That's... actually a valid point. Why did the author wait until the very end of the article to present it?
On the other hand, it could be that textual representation is just another hump that's so fundamental to real coding that it was never identified before. This research is very interesting: it suggests that the reason why we keep seeing stuff on the front page that makes us go "
Doesn't this guy even know about <insert really simple concept here>?!?" is because a lot of people are literally just not capable of grasping the really simple concepts of programming.In this modern age of
s, this may sound discriminatory or elitist, but it's really not, not in context. Take an honest look at yourself; every one of you knows that there are certain skills you'll never be good at because your brain is just not wired for them. (For me, it's art and music. I'm quite capable of appreciating both, but absolutely hopeless at producing them.) For people who don't have the talent for coding, is it really a bad thing to have them think programming's not for them?
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@jaloopa said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Interesting, but it makes sense especially for a target age where reading isn't necessarily natural yet.
Seriously? I was reading before the age of 2. Admittedly, that may have been a bit precocious, but by 5, (the age they're talking about in the article,) everyone should be able to in a society that values universal literacy.
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
That's... actually a valid point. Why did the author wait until the very end of the article to present it?
Maybe so the article is longer than 2 sentences? Just a thought.
The real point I wanted to bring up here is that these guys wanted to know if their software was good for X, so they actually tried testing it at X and observed the results and iterated based on that. That's extremely rare in IT today, because this is a shit industry full of morons who are shit at software development.
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Seriously? I was reading before the age of 2. Admittedly, that may have been a bit precocious, but by 5, (the age they're talking about in the article,) everyone should be able to in a society that values universal literacy.
Yeah and you defeated the Nazis by 7.
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@blakeyrat said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Yeah and you defeated the Nazis by 7.
No, that had to wait until I was 9 and beat Castle Wolfenstein for the first time. :P
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@blakeyrat said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
I'm sure this will devolve into some stupid "only text == programming!!!!!" argument from the morons on this forum,
People focus too much on the "typing vs dragging blocks" argument, and don't notice the other dozens (hundreds) of other details that make a programming environment easy to learn
These "for kids" environments generally:
- Are super easy to run (instead of requiring an hour-long 50GB install)
- Have a small function library that actually makes sense, and has one and only one clearly named function to do each
- Present those available functions in a nice list, next to the "coding area", organized by category
- Have a simple and easy to understand language (no complex concepts like classes, pointers, inheritance, etc)
- Allow you to visually separate and navigate different sections of the code
- Don't require you to learn what a "build system" is before you can do anything
- Don't require you to learn any version control system
- Run your code easily and instantly when you push the button, every time (project never just breaks for no apparent reason)
- Let you see the value of each sub-expression in a block of code when it's run
- Let you evaluate functions with various input values to test them
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Why did the author wait until the very end of the article to present it?
Why did you assume you knew what their point was going to be early? From your replies, it sounds like you went in with an agenda, started arguing against their findings immediately, and only stopped to reflect when you saw something you didn't expect. Case in point:
@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Code is inherently complex, because it's used to solve complex problems
Their icon-based ideas are solving complex problems, but in a non-textual way, and are therefore easier to understand by their target audience. You can assert all day that you "know" why code is complex, but if you don't do any studies, you don't actually know anything.
@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
This research is very interesting: it suggests that the reason why we keep seeing stuff on the front page that makes us go "
Doesn't this guy even know about <insert really simple concept here>?!?" is because a lot of people are literally just not capable of grasping the really simple concepts of programming.It actually says nothing of the kind. You had a foregone conclusion and you're projecting it onto the article. This is the article's actual conclusion:
So why does this work? We believe that by focusing on icons first, players don’t have to juggle learning two things at once, instead learning programming logic first and textual representation after. Moreover, when text code is introduced, players’ previous knowledge of the game’s mechanics keeps their confidence up as they solve familiar puzzles.
Which is to say, even young children can grasp the basics of logic needed for programming, and understand how to instruct a computer to carry out tasks. What they can't grasp easily is syntax.
@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
I was reading before the age of 2
Maybe you'll learn reading comprehension soon.
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@anonymous234 said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
These "for kids" environments generally:
are a good environment for learning. As opposed to your typical text editor, which is a horrible place to learn anything. What remains to be studied is whether people who begin in a good learning environment have a leg up on people learning to code the "old fashioned way" when they "graduate".
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@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
It actually says nothing of the kind. You had a foregone conclusion and you're projecting it onto the article.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. "The research" I was referring to was not Blakeyrat's article, but the paper I linked to under "another hump."
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
It actually says nothing of the kind. You had a foregone conclusion and you're projecting it onto the article.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. "The research" I was referring to was not Blakeyrat's article, but the paper I linked to under "another hump."
Doesn't change my point. Your responses before the linked article show the same bias: you want programming to be some special skill only elite people can master, and you're therefore rejecting any evidence that it can be taught to a wide variety of people. Maybe not everyone, but certainly more people than think they can learn it.
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@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Doesn't change my point. Your responses before the linked article show the same bias: you want programming to be some special skill only elite people can master, and you're therefore rejecting any evidence that it can be taught to a wide variety of people.
You should read the Hacker News comments on this one, half of them are exactly that and the other half of them is shitting on this development team for being "so stupid, this is all obvious" etc.
Yet more reasons to hate IT and everybody involved in it. As if you needed more.
Stupidly this reminds me of a Deep Space 9 episode, where they learn via. murder flashbacks that something like 50% of Trills can accept immortality-offering tummy parasites, and not the 2% the government says. The government lies to the people because they know there'd be riots if it were common-knowledge. Sisko, being the worst Starfleet captain, uses this info to blackmail the government into getting what he wants, because blackmail is awesome. They then fly back to Earth using the power of a antimatter generator hooked up to Roddenberry spinning in his grave.
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@blakeyrat said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
You should read the Hacker News comments on this one
No thanks, I have Mason instead ;P
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@blakeyrat said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
I'm sure this will devolve into some stupid "only text == programming!!!!!" argument from the morons on this forum
Obligatory: You expect that because you're an idiot.
Equally seriously but more on topic: For the simple sort of stuff you'd expect from a kid pictures like they used make sense. I wouldn't expect a 5 year old to be able to read (though obviously some can). Extrapolating this to code that solves problems of average real life complexity (which probably doesn't really exist given the wide range of problems we all see)? GIBBERISH.
Has @antiquarian posted the hieroglyphics Haskell code yet?
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
@jaloopa said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Interesting, but it makes sense especially for a target age where reading isn't necessarily natural yet.
Seriously? I was reading before the age of 2. Admittedly, that may have been a bit precocious, but by 5, (the age they're talking about in the article,) everyone should be able to in a society that values universal literacy.
And yet you still haven't deployed a working vacuum train?
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@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Doesn't change my point. Your responses before the linked article show the same bias: you want programming to be some special skill only elite people can master, and you're therefore rejecting any evidence that it can be taught to a wide variety of people.
Kind of. Not exactly.
More like, "I'm a computer user first and a programmer second." As I mentioned above, this site is full of evidence that just because a lot of people technically can program, doesn't mean that they should be doing it, and it certainly doesn't mean that they should be developing stuff you or I may end up depending on.
What I want is for people who think "I should become a programmer because I hear it pays well" to stay far, far away, for the same reason I wouldn't want such people to be my doctor. Programming is a lot of mental hard work that not everyone is cut out for, and all too often people build stuff that works just barely well enough to convince someone to buy it or download it or whatever, and then it blows up in their face.
What I want is an end to Weinberg's Second Law: "If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
What I want is for people who think "I should become a programmer because I hear it pays well" to stay far, far away, for the same reason I wouldn't want such people to be my doctor.
Doctors work constantly to make the practice of being a doctor easier.
Programmers (seemingly) work tirelessly to make the practice of being a programmer as horrible and unfun as possible.
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
What I want is for people who think "I should become a programmer because I hear it pays well" to stay far, far away, for the same reason I wouldn't want such people to be my doctor.
A lot of people want to become a doctor for the money. The reason why they don't make it is they fail the long and intensive training course that they have to do. Programming has a far lower barrier to entry: all you need is a text editor and a command line, and all PCs have both of those.
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@blakeyrat said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Doctors work constantly to make the practice of being a doctor easier.
Are they? How?
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@blakeyrat said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Stupidly this reminds me of a Deep Space 9 episode, where they learn via. murder flashbacks that something like 50% of Trills can accept immortality-offering tummy parasites, and not the 2% the government says. The government lies to the people because they know there'd be riots if it were common-knowledge. Sisko, being the worst Starfleet captain, uses this info to blackmail the government into getting what he wants, because blackmail is awesome.
Admittedly, it's been a while since I saw that one. I don't remember anything about blackmail; care to refresh my memory?
Here's what I remember: The reason they end up discovering the problem is that one person who ended up getting one turned out to be physically capable of accepting a symbiont, but not mentally able to take it; it drove him crazy and he turned into a serial killer.
Faced with cases like this (does anyone really think it only happened once?) and the simple fact that there aren't anywhere even close to enough symbionts to go around, because low breeding rates, the Trill government chose to promote the official line that most people weren't compatible, without elaborating on the distinction between "biologically compatible" and "mentally compatible" so that every little
on the planet didn't end up clamoring for a symbiont of their very own.When faced with a difficult choice like that, the decision they made actually seems pretty reasonable IMO. I take it you don't agree?
Also, something something blackmail, apparently?
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@raceprouk said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
A lot of people want to become a doctor for the money. The reason why they don't make it is they fail the long and intensive training course that they have to do.
Yeah, but it's the ones who don't fail who you gotta worry about. As the old joke goes,
Q: What do you call the guy who finished last in his class at med school?
A: "Doctor."(It would work just as well, and be a good bit more chilling, to ask it about a guy who cheated his way through med school.)
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@cartman82 said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Are they? How?
Surgical robots. Computerized prescription systems. Tablet apps for recording standardized evaluations. Etc.
Doctors realize that easier and more accessible processes are more consistent and less error-prone. Software developers still believe that every single tool ought to have its own extremely weird and inaccessible text-based UI.
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@masonwheeler
Also, though I don't remember if it was that episode or somewhere in the novels or somewhere else... Trill society has a very high level of discrimination between the symbiot caste and the everyone else. So the 2% also propogated the "very few people are compatible with symbiots" line to keep the unwashed masses in line.
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Yeah, but it's the ones who don't fail who you gotta worry about.
They successfully completed a seven-year training course designed specifically to weed out the stupid and the hopeless. I'd trust even the shittiest doctor over most programmers any day.
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@blakeyrat said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Programmers (seemingly) work tirelessly to make the practice of being a programmer as horrible and unfun as possible.
I haven't noticed this.
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@boomzilla said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
I haven't noticed this.
Neither have the rest of us. I think @shoulder-alien has been hanging around Blakey again.
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@blakeyrat said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Software developers still believe that every single tool ought to have its own extremely weird and inaccessible text-base UI
We're not all dyslexics and different people work better with different tools. If I were a mouse typer, I'd probably have carpal tunnel from that. Using a CLI has probably made my life a lot less painful.
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
@boomzilla said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
I haven't noticed this.
Neither have the rest of us. I think @shoulder-alien has been hanging around Blakey again.
Speak for yourself. You're the one whose literal first reaction to "we found a better way to teach kids programming" is "Yeah but very few people should be making software in the first place because only the super special 10% are worth anything"
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@boomzilla said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
different people work better with different tools
And if you use GUI tools, you get made fun of and told to use the command line like a real man. So there's that.
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@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
And if you use GUI tools, you get made fun of and told to use the command line like a real man.
Unless you work in .NET, in which case you're allowed to use Visual Studio.
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@raceprouk said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Unless you work in .NET,
in which case you get made fun of for using .NET. Some of my coworkers refuse to hire anyone with .NET experience because they insist using Visual Studio makes you a shitty coder.
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@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
And if you use GUI tools, you get made fun of and told to use the command line like a real man.
By @blakeyrat. Most of the rest of us recognize that that kind of thinking is 30 years behind the times.
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@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Some of my coworkers refuse to hire anyone with .NET experience because they insist using Visual Studio makes you a shitty coder.
I'll lend you some
so you can 'convince' them otherwise ;)
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
And if you use GUI tools, you get made fun of and told to use the command line like a real man.
By @blakeyrat. Most of the rest of us recognize that that kind of thinking is 30 years behind the times.
nah, also by boomzilla and my offline coworkers and probably others I'm forgetting. Go look at any git thread: they all say, "just use the command line". Nobody's improving git guis.
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@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Nobody's improving git guis.
Given the state of them, I think a better solution would be to burn them to the ground and start again.
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Take an honest look at yourself; every one of you knows that there are certain skills you'll never be good at because your brain is just not wired for them. (For me, it's art and music. I'm quite capable of appreciating both, but absolutely hopeless at producing them.) For people who don't have the talent for coding, is it really a bad thing to have them think programming's not for them?
Except, in my case, that's literally everything. I have no overwhelmingly strong skills, but am not completely awful at anything either. The only thing I have going for me is a good long term memory and a decent amount of problem solving. And I absolutely reject the premise that basic programming is beyond most people. It's beyond some, even some who want to do it, but there's no way I'm going to accept that most people can't do it.
What I want is for people to have access to tools that will help them learn. If someone would not have the opportunity to enter this field because all of the tutorials and such are stupid and hard for no reason, I call that a tragedy. If someone finds they cannot do the work, fine. But I want as many barriers out of their way as possible. Because barriers to entry are stupid.
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@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
nah, also by boomzilla and my offline coworkers and probably others I'm forgetting. Go look at any git thread: they all say, "just use the command line". Nobody's improving git guis.
Yeah, but that's Git. As I said elsewhere on here, there's only so much that lipstick can improve things; people are still going to clearly see there's a pig underneath.
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Seriously? I was reading before the age of 2. Admittedly, that may have been a bit precocious, but by 5, (the age they're talking about in the article,) everyone should be able to in a society that values universal literacy.
Not in my day/location — reading skills were only taught from age 6, when you went to “big school". (These days they begin a bit earlier, but at age 5 I could probably recognise the letters of my own first name, but not much more.)
Plus an article I read sometime in the last year or so claimed that there’s little point in trying to teach all kids to read before that sort of age, nor to make any decisions about their future based on the inability of some/many to pick up the skill to read at that age.
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Admittedly, it's been a while since I saw that one. I don't remember anything about blackmail; care to refresh my memory?
No, fuck you.
But since I like Star Trek:
Dax hears a particular music phrase and it brings up memories of a murder, then she starts getting sick. The entire command crew of DS9 takes the Defiant to the Trill home planet despite literally like 2 days before saying the Defiant was supposed to be used to defend the wormhole and also the writers of the show ignoring that they have 3 Runabout ships that can do warp 8 and easily accommodate that many people but they take the Defiant anyway because fuck defending Bajor from attacks. I guess. Once on Trill, the master super Trill stomach-parasite guy says the reason she's sick is because there's some kind of vague disconnect between the stomach-parasite and Jadzia's brain. They do a lot of tracking-down and find out the reason for this is that the stomach-parasite was briefly in the body of a dude who played music, but also was a murderer and murdered a guy while he had the parasite, after which they took the parasite out, blanked its memory of the event (incorrectly) and gave it to Jadzia (or her predecessor I can't remember). The murderer guy who had the parasite should have been disqualified via the rules that say only 1-2% of the Trill population can have parasites, but it turns out that he wasn't and there was no negative interacting with the parasite which proved that the government's line was wrong. At some point the master super Trill parasite guy tells them it's closer to 50% of the population that can accept parasites, but the Government lies about it because only a few thousand parasites are available. Sisko brings this information to the Trill President or whoever and demands they cure Jadzia by removing the memory-block or he'll take the information public. (And yes, it was clearly blackmail.)
@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Here's what I remember: The reason they end up discovering the problem is that one person who ended up getting one turned out to be physically capable of accepting a symbiont, but not mentally able to take it; it drove him crazy and he turned into a serial killer.
IIRC he was a killer before he took the symbiont also, he just happened to cover it up and not get caught, and that should have (in theory, according to the government) biologically disqualified him. After he got it he killed again, that's when they took it back out of him and covered it all up. But I haven't seen it any ages.
@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
When faced with a difficult choice like that, the decision they made actually seems pretty reasonable IMO. I take it you don't agree?
Meh. The point is Sisko blackmailed them. It was one of those early signs that "oh hey guyz, Roddenberry's rules? OUT THE FUCKING WINDOW NOW."
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@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Speak for yourself.
I thought I was.
@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
You're the one whose literal first reaction to "we found a better way to teach kids programming" is "Yeah but very few people should be making software in the first place because only the super special 10% are worth anything"
No, my literal first reaction was to call blakey an idiot. I think you're confusing me with @masonwheeler. My comment was made after he'd said some of that stuff, I think, but before I'd read it. I didn't really comment on any of that except to make fun of Mason regarding his claimed age of literacy.
I do believe that most people probably aren't capable of solving complex problems with computer code (especially some that I work with). Even the "best" people at that task tend to struggle mightily over and over and over.
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@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
@boomzilla said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
different people work better with different tools
And if you use GUI tools, you get made fun of and told to use the command line like a real man. So there's that.
I will certainly make fun of you if you make wild and ridiculous claims like @masonwheeler probably already has about CLIs.
Warning: NON CAR ANALOGY AHEAD
I vastly prefer to using screws to nails when fastening wood, but I still use a hammer when I need to deal with a nail.
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@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
And if you use GUI tools, you get made fun of and told to use the command line like a real man.
By @blakeyrat. Most of the rest of us idiots recognize that that kind of thinking is 30 years behind the times.
But sure, keep using inferior tools due to your superstitions.
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@izzion said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Also, though I don't remember if it was that episode or somewhere in the novels or somewhere else... Trill society has a very high level of discrimination between the symbiot caste and the everyone else. So the 2% also propogated the "very few people are compatible with symbiots" line to keep the unwashed masses in line.
There was definitely a large hint of that, and I think IIRC also a "BTW if the Federation Council knew about this they might give you the boot" in a time when Trill needed Federation defenses due to war-like posturing from all sides.
The Next Gen crew denied Federation membership for a lot less than that.
@raceprouk said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Unless you work in .NET, in which case you're allowed to use Visual Studio.
Unless you adopt WinForms or WebForms which, despite being functional, powerful and easy-to-use (well, WebForms less so), are mocked incessantly. .NET isn't immune.
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@magus said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
And I absolutely reject the premise that basic programming is beyond most people. It's beyond some, even some who want to do it, but there's no way I'm going to accept that most people can't do it.
Did you read the research paper I linked?
The researchers developed a test that can predict quite accurately which students will and will not do well in a programming class, before they ever write a single line of code, simply by determining whether the students are capable of developing a consistent mental model of basic abstractions. (Not a correct mental model; this is for people who haven't learned anything about programming yet. But if they can even get it wrong in the same way every time, it means that they're able to grasp the basic concept that there's something going on here.) A lot of them simply can't do that, and they're the ones who find programming difficult and continue to do so no matter how much they're taught.
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@blakeyrat said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
Surgical robots. Computerized prescription systems. Tablet apps for recording standardized evaluations. Etc.
Doctors realize that easier and more accessible processes are more consistent and less error-prone. Software developers still believe that every single tool ought to have its own extremely weird and inaccessible text-based UI.But these things are all made by engineers and programmers. Doctors are just the end users.
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@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
@masonwheeler said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
@yamikuronue said in Actual... testing!? WITH USERS?!?!?!?:
And if you use GUI tools, you get made fun of and told to use the command line like a real man.
By @blakeyrat. Most of the rest of us recognize that that kind of thinking is 30 years behind the times.
nah, also by boomzilla and my offline coworkers and probably others I'm forgetting. Go look at any git thread: they all say, "just use the command line". Nobody's improving git guis.
Yes, in my experience, every SCM I've used is better on the command line, though I've barely used git and I can't recall ever trying to use any sort of GUI with it.
