Number of languages known [was Re: Python is readable] - somewhat OT

[Nathan Rice]

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:20 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> On 4/3/2012 8:39 AM, Nathan Rice wrote:
>
>> Ultimately, the answers to your questions exist in the world for you
>> to see.  How does a surgeon describe a surgical procedure?  How does a
>> chef describe a recipe?  How does a carpenter describe the process of
>> building cabinets?  Aside from specific words, they all use natural
>> language, and it works just fine.
>
>
> Not really. Surgeon's learn by *watching* a surgeon who knows the operation
> and next (hopefully) doing a particular surgery under supervision of such a
> surgeon, who watches and talks, and may even grab the instruments and
> re-show. They then really learn by doing the procedure on multiple people.
> They often kill a few on the way to mastery.

Well, there is declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge.  In all
these cases, only the procedural knowledge is absolutely necessary,
but the declarative knowledge is usually a prerequisite to learning
the procedure in any sort of reasonable manner.

> I first learned basic carpentry and other skills by watching my father. I
> don't remember that he ever said anything about how to hold the tools.
>
> I similarly learned basic cooking by watching my mom. My knowledge of how to
> crack open an egg properly and separate the yolk from the rest is a wordless
> memory movie.

A picture is worth a thousand words :)

If you would like, I don't have any problem incorporating visual
programming and programming by demonstration.  I didn't go in that
direction because I have enough to defend as it is.  I like to look at
it from the perspective of teaching/communicating, rather than
operating a simple machine.