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Comment by mattdeboard | Hacker News Reader

>Finally, I will say that learning to create software changes you and makes you different.

This is so very true in my experience. The way I think has fundamentally changed since programming became the primary professional/pastime activity in my life about two years ago. I'm 32, and everything from my politics to my decisions about where to live has been effected. (Whether I'm using the proper choice between 'effect'/'affect' is still a challenge...)

Programming has taught me more about critical thinking in two years than I learned in the previous 30. I can't stand many of the things I used to because of it, but thoroughly love many of the things I used to find painfully boring.

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Seymore Papert, in Mindstorms:

"By deliberately learning to imitate mechanical thinking, the learner becomes able to articulate what mechanical thinking is and what it is not. The exercise can lead to greater confidence about the ability to choose a cognitive style that suits the problem. Analysis of "mechanical thinking" and how it is different from other kinds and practice with problem analysis can result in a new degree of intellectual sophistication. By providing a very concrete down-to-earth model of a particular style of thinking, work with the computer can make it easier to understand that there is such a thing as a "style of thinking". And giving children the opportunity to choose one style or another provides an opportunity to develop the skill necessary to choose between styles. Thus instead of inducing mechanical thinking, contact with computers could turn out to be the best conceivable antidote to it. And for me what is the most important in this is that through these experiences these children would be serving their apprenticeships as epistemologists, that is to say learning to think articulately about thinking."

http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful...

More here: http://dailypapert.com/

Astounding; this quote nails my experience. Learning to program de-programmed the mechanical, "proceed until error" non-thinking conditioning that plagued my entire adult life.

Superb, that's going straight into my text file of wise words.

Effecting = Doing Affecting = Being done to

You effect change and change affects you.

Something was done to your decisions so the right word is "affected".

There are a lot of non-native-English HN participants, and I think this sort of language pedantry 1) accomplishes nothing, as OP will likely still use the wrong word, and 2) discourages those who lack confidence in their language skills from posting what may be very insightful comments.

I wasn't trying to being pedantic (although apparently it came off that way). I was trying to offer some genuine help to someone. I think that's in the spirit of HN.

You can only learn when people tell you what the right word is. We aren't born with a magic understanding of English. I appreciate it when people help me and in this case it seemed like the parent poster was genuinely interested because he noted that he didn't know which one to use.

I actually found a3camero's post informative! I am a native English speaker and I have never had any trouble differentiating between "effect" and "affect", but had never seen it written down as a rule. One of the fascinating things about language is that we "know" an awful lot of grammar rules without actually being able to explain how they work. Another example is the Spanish verbs "ser" and "estar", which both translate as "to be". As a (bilingual) native speaker of Spanish, I use them correctly, but it wasn't until I was in college and trying to help a friend with his Spanish class that I came across the rule that governs their use.

I think it's very easy to mistake "informative" for pedantic. In this case, the OP made it clear that he was unsure whether the word was correct and a3camero offered not just a correction, but a succinct explanation. I wish people would correct my grammar like that more often.

Thanks for the kind words. Appreciate it.

English is a language I'm always learning more about too!

I disagree. There was no condescending tone, and it seemed like a genuine attempt at helping someone learn the difference between affect and effect. I would label this helpful, not pedantic.

In spanish effect = efectuar, affect = afectar, a child could tell the difference between both, you're trying to make some effect but it doesn't affect me.

Ah, I see that my comment came below some other ones but when I was writing it there weren't any others. Might explain the downvoting...

(Whether I'm using the proper choice between 'effect'/'affect' is still a challenge...)

Somehow....deep down inside I think you knew you wrote it wrong, but that was the "effect" you were going for wasn't it! ;)

Could you give some examples of how programming has taught you about critical thinking?

I lost my job in PR in February. Instead of doing the knee getting another job immediately as my family urged me to do -- I am a single father after all -- I realized I'd make more money in the long term by living on the ~$5k I had saved up and free fall until school began again in the fall, at which point I'd have GI Bill + student loan money, and we could live off ramen.

During the free fall period I focused like a laser on programming and decided that that job was the last thing I'd ever do in PR or marketing. Lo and behold the hard work paid off when I got an internship last month. Pay isn't great but it's better than the $0 I was getting paid to hack at home. (Plus I do actual programming, not coffee-fetching and what have you).

What else... it's so many little things. It's made me be truer to principles which had been loosely held previously, i.e. drug legalization (legalize it all, along with prostitution and all that), religion (strict atheist now), politics (libertarian, obviously). Not that becoming a programmer made me more liberal, it's just that it forced me to evaluate some contradictory stances and come down on one side or another. It made me more honest with myself.

This is probably all pretty squishy stuff and not concrete examples you were looking for. But my life is going way way better than it ever has, and I credit the time and energy I've spent educating myself to be a programmer, and the things I've learned along the way, with that improvement.

Thanks for sharing that. I've been thinking on and off about moving programming from a hobby to full-time job and it's nice to see someone who took the plunge.

I'm curious to know if it was difficult to find an internship. Typically, companies are looking for people out of college and I would expect them to dismiss older candidates pretty fast unless you have a strong cover letter.

Good luck with the new endeavor!

I dunno about the age thing. I'm middle aged in programming years, and had no issues landing a job at the only Python/Django biz that I know of in central Indiana. I started attending local python & other meetups, and connections flowed naturally from there. That's how I got this. I poured a lot of time and energy into this pursuit, and it paid off.

It has been the purest, most gratifying & deeply rewarding transformation of my life, ahead even of 10 years of service as a Marine. Why? Because every second and calorie I poured into self-education about programming was out of pure passion, not because I was contractually obligated or faced court martial otherwise.

Programming is the most perfect creative outlet for me, and very day im absolutely giddy about going to work and am a little disappointed when it's quitting time. Achievement unlocked. If you want to do it then do it.

effect/affect is simple: effect is a noun and affect is a verb. when you affect something, it causes an effect :)

Alas, "effect" is also a transitive verb: you can effect change, i.e. cause it to occur.

And "affect" is also a noun, although rarely used.

  affect: the conscious subjective aspect of an emotion considered apart from bodily
          changes; also : a set of observable manifestations of a
          subjectively experienced emotion
          <patients … showed perfectly normal reactions and affects — Oliver Sacks>

(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/affect)

But it's still a good rule of thumb.

At least this usage of affect carries a different pronunciation. The emphasis is on the first syllable here, rather than the second, making it SOUND like a different word than effect.

And alas, "affect" is also a noun.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/affect#Noun

The requirement for your argument is that the original poster of this side topic understands the differentiation between a noun and a verb.

Otherwise your generalization is aptly put.

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