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Alan Perlis wrote, "To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program." This view is a mistake, and it is this widespread and virulent mistake that keeps programming a difficult and obscure art. A person is not a machine, and should not be forced to think like one.

This is nothing but prejudice, and, ironically, it is contrary to how we work as human beings. In any field, we celebrate sympathy between an expert and the matter of his or her expertise. If we say that a pianist "becomes" the piano; we do not regret the dehumanization of the pianist. If we say that a rider has learned to "think like" a horse, we do not believe the rider has become less intelligent thereby. If we say a fireman thinks like a fire, it's a compliment, not a statement that his mind can be modeled by simple physical laws. Sympathy is an expansion of one's understanding, not a reduction. For example, the wonderfully named "Mechanical Sympathy" is a blog that will improve your grasp of the connection between performance and hardware architecture without dehumanizing you one bit. Heck, here's a guy who says he has to "think like a maggot," and he doesn't seem ashamed or degraded in the least: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17700116

Is it reasonable to ask a programmer to think like a machine? Of course. We find it natural and admirable for people working with pianos, horses, fires, or maggots to identify themselves with the subject of their expertise, and there's no reason why we should make an exception for computers. It's true that when it comes to usability, for a long time we've known we have to take very strong negative emotions into account. It isn't an overstatement to say that some people loath and fear computers. However, as a general principle, it seems to me that any educational philosophy grounded in the assumption that the learners find the subject uniquely distasteful or unworthy is unlikely to be effective. If someone learning programming finds computers so inherently distasteful that they are put off by the idea of achieving a more intimate sympathy with them, then the long-term plan should be to overcome their aversion, not to try to teach them to understand and control something they are fundamentally alienated from. Human beings just don't work that way. Alienation and understanding don't mix.

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