MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: "I Know Kung Fu"

> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...scientists.html

It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Imparting knowledge is one thing, but is it enough ?

Take for example computer programming. To be a passable programmer, you need at the very least a very good knowledge of the languages you are using and the environment you are working in, decent problem solving skills, and a very good memory to keep track of the flow of data and logic through the code.

The tech talked about above might be able to give you an excellent knowledge of the language syntax and environment, but what about the rest of the skills ?

Tenacity and problem solving are two essential skills for all programmers (well for all programmers who want to excel at their art) - never give up, keep trying, the ability to look at things from different angles, explore alternate solutions, etc.

Could a knowledge transfer machine teach you these things ? Really, we are talking the difference between knowledge and skills ...

A lot of this comes down to work ethic and passion. If you don't particularly like programming or computers, treat your work as "another day, another dollar", then you'll never be a good programmer. These are what Cringley (Accidental Empires) called "lumpen programmers". As Cringley said, these "programmers" should go get a job maintaining COBOL code at a large insurance company, because they'll be useless at anything else.

On the other hand, if you have real passion for computers, love programming, eat sleep and breath computers, love learning new stuff, love discovering new solutions or new ways to solve problems, love exploring, love the thrill of bending a machine to your will, love messing around in debuggers and beneath the layers of OS's, networks, etc, then you'll likely make an excellent programmer - a "gun". And, one excellent programmer is worth 100's of lumpens.

So, if a machine is going to teach you to be a computer programmer, could it teach you to be an "excellent programmer" (with all the required skills, not just knowledge of the syntax and commands) ? Or are people going to take what the machine gives them as a basis - they might be "trainee programmers" - and then need to develop their problem solving, etc skills through countless 1,000's of hours of hard work ? Could such a machine turn someone who dislikes programming, or a "lumpen", into a "gun" programmer ?

It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Moose