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Comment by eah13 | Hacker News Reader

> this is not due to talent per se but the same people sufficiently obsessed with computer science to teach themselves at a young age also have the obsession to learn and master the more esoteric parts after they've become excellent programmers even though the practical utility is much less in practice

Agreed. I'd add this thought: code is a human language and like all languages fluency is most easily developed as a child but immersion and repetition can help adults develop it too.

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I disagree. A PL is not a "natural language" by definition (it's eminently artificial). Although PLs do evolve over time, they seem to be essentially different in structure from natural language, in that they have a precise syntax and well-defined semantics, unlike natural language. And, I disagree that fluency -- in a PL or a natural language -- is more easily developed as child than as an adult. Children just have a more powerful learning environment (total immersion).

Having said that, I do think that learning programming young is a good idea, but not because it's "easier" for children. Instead, they simply have a much longer time to get used to the "logical way of thinking" (I don't know of a more concrete term for this, but hopefully you know what I mean).

I would not expect someone who started at 10 and is now 20 (10 years experience) to be a better programmer than someone who started at 20 and is now 30, or even someone who started at 50 and is now 60.

I'd say human language is the superset of artificial language and natural language. Though the artifical/natural labels are a poor fit.

Experience is a big factor, but I think there's a limit to the amount of language learning most 50 year olds can undergo, even in a decade. But luckily for us we agree young exposure to code is a good thing :)

> [...] there's a limit to the amount of language learning most 50 year olds can undergo, even in a decade.

I wonder why you think this is true? I have personally never been given any reason to believe that a 50 year old is any less able to learn a language than a 0 year old. In fact, if you took a 50 year old and dumped them alone in a foreign country and gave them one or two dedicated language teachers and left them there for many years (which is the environment in which most children learn a language), I expect they would learn the language just as well as the child, if not better.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=language+learning+rates+...

It's well documented that the median language-learning speed/ability of younger people is greater than that of older people.

Hmm... maybe this is just me not being familiar with the literature, but from that link, it looks like there are very mixed results (some studies report no difference based on age of acquisition, whereas others report that children learn more quickly/effectively). It does seem like the percentage weighs in your favor though, so I suppose I should adjust my beliefs on the matter.

I have some personal experience that suggests otherwise. A close relative of mine aspired to live in France for most of her life, and after a divorce she decided to pick up and move to Paris at the age of 48. When she first moved her French was quite bad, and Parisians would regularly switch to English when they heard her broken speech. Fast-forward to 8 years later and she is now fluent to the point that she's able to take on clients to her psychotherapy practice who speak only French. Her accent could use some work, and it took 7 or 8 years of complete immersion, but I don't know that there's any hard "limit" per se, to what someone can learn at 50 — it just takes longer.

Sounds like your relative had an above-median learning rate. But a median 10 year old could likely learn a new language to fluency in even less time.

Do you have any sources to argue that code is more similar to human language than it is to mathematics?

False dichotomy. Mathematics is also a human language. Code and mathematics are more similar in many respects than code and Spanish. but they all share common features of being cultural, mutable, consensus-based, imperfect, and historically embedded.

Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics might be interesting to you. His description of calculation as a linguistic process should settle the issue if you buy it.

Edit: just found this related item on HN, a math prof examining the nature of a proof: http://profkeithdevlin.org/2014/11/24/what-is-a-proof-really...

ok, sure. So you are saying that the OPs statement "code is more easily learned as a child because language is more easily learned as a child" is a pointless narrowing of the idea that "code is more easily learned as a child because all cultural, mutable, consensus based concepts are more easily learned as a child"?

I believe they're roughly synonymous, yes. The processes of aging and aculturation both involve an ossification of our ideas and concepts that make learning new ones comparatively difficult. Vinod Khosla has talked extensively about how he has to fight these processes in himself to bring a 'beginners mind' to bear on new startup ideas. The median effort required to do this is lower in younger people.

By the way, older people who share the characteristics of being only lightly acculturated (i.e. eccentric) share the relevant characteristics with children and may be able to learn things like languages with childlike speed. Hence, I believe, PG's observation that startup founders of any age tend to be weird, quirky, or poorly socialized in various ways.

I don't think your last sentence is a at all true.

all cultural, mutable, consensus based concepts are more easily learned as a child

There are many "hobbies" that have a cultural component. It helps to learn these earlier, because it removes cognitive overhead during later studies. But its simply not true that children are better at learning everything. They are hard-wired for language tho. Plenty of other things they are un/der developed for.

Well mathematics is also a language in a sense. At least notation. But otherwise they are very very different things.

I have recently found tools that are mostly used for learning natural languages are also useful for learning programming languages. Computer flash card programs, like Anki, are effective at memorizing a vocabulary efficiently. Just like real flash cards, you put an English word or definition on one side, and the word or phrase on the other side.

So as I've been going through a Coursera on the R programming language, every time the instructor explains a new function or way of doing something, I put it in an Anki flash card. I haven't been doing it for long enough to be certain, but so far I think it's been pretty effective. Because 90% of the work of learning a programming language is just like a natural language; the vocabulary and grammar.

You could also use this to learn mathematical notation, but that's only a small part of it. I have yet to find any use for this system in my other Coursera course on logic.

Interesting that you've found language study techniques useful. I also believe we should teach code like we teach other languages: http://blog.trinket.io/code-and-language/

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