Dealing with Meaninglessness

For all the coders out there, Coding Horror has picked up a great theme- Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats. Some blokes from Middlesex U have devised a test (descibed in this paper [pdf]) that is strongly correlated with programming ability. Their interpretation is that the ability to create a mental model of basically meaningless rules is what allows people to grasp three primary "hurdles" of comp sci: "assignment and sequence, recursion and iteration, and concurrency".

Having a philosophical bent, I can see this extending beyond programming. It's not just an ability to deal with meaningless symbols and rules, it's also the willingness to deal with these things that makes people capable of making computers do things. I used to see this as a kind of patience, the kind of patience that lets you use early versions of products, or old ones, but looking at it in terms of the ability and inclination to focus on pure abstractions.

Having been a TA for introductory c++ courses at university- it was obvious that some people were going to take a long, long time to get the basics. But the problem is, programming is generally not one of those things where you learn something, and then do it. You have to keep figuring out things again and again, so if you aren't good at learning it, you probably won't be good at doing it. You can't study your way to the top...