[na4ma4]

I think they're just using hyperbole for the watershed moment when you start to understand your first programming language.

At first it's all mystical nonsense that does something, then you start to poke at it and the response changes, then you start adding in extra steps and they do things, you could probably describe it as more of a Eureka! moment.

At some point you "learn variables" and it's hard to imagine being in the shoes of someone who doesn't understand how their code does what it does.

(I've repeated a bit of what you said as well, I'm just trying to clarify by repeating)

[chucksmash]

It's not even intended as hyperbole. Watching kids first learn to program, there were many high schoolers who didn't really get the reason you'd want to use a variable. They'd use a constant (say, 6) in their program. You'd say, "how about we make this a variable?" So they'd write "six = 6" - which shows they understand they're giving a name to the value, but also shows they don't really yet understand why they're giving a name to the value.

I think the mental rewiring that goes on as you move past those primitive first steps is so comprehensive that it makes it hard to relate across that knowledge boundary. Some of the hardest things to explain are the ones that have become a second nature to us.

[tharkun__]

Whoa, I just checked back at this thread after some time.

Grand parent here who replied to you initially.

Yeah I was assuming that the high schoolers understood what "x" being a variable in math was about. And then going on to programming and essentially just doing the same there in a slightly different syntax/environment so to speak.

Again, fair enough :) if those high schoolers didn't understand variables in math, they wouldn't magically understand variables in programming.

And also fair enough that I probably mis-remembered university times and how many people really should never have been in a computer science program. Now that "we're talking about this" I remember one of my first university programming classes. I was in a lab to get some extra credits for the course where they explained / got us to program some very simple boolean logic. I was soooooo bored but many peeps were struggling and asking for help from the tutor(s). I was browsing Slashdot to pass the time until the tutor was able to come by and check on my "progress" :P

And oh my $deity (oh my a variable for "god" lol!) now that you mention `six = 6` I see this _all the effing time_ in pull requests at work where people define something like `THIRTY_MINUTES_IN_SECONDS = ...` to then use it as a timeout somewhere and I have to explain how that makes zero effing sense (especially since the next guy will just change the value to "60" without changing the name). Name it `TIMEOUT_IN_SECONDS_FOR_PURPOSE_X` dang it!

TL;DR: I concur.

[pixl97]

Yep, I remember way back when in grade school messing around with the gorillas.bas file with nearly zero understanding. You could change stuff in one place and it would change the gravity in the game. Changing something else and the game might not run. Change some other lines and it totally freaks out.

I didn't have any programming books or even the internet back then. It was a poke and prod at the magical incantations type of thing.