Reading software code is different to reading written language, but it also doesn't rely on parts of the brain activated by maths.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.stad.social/post/22011

“The areas of the MD network that were activated by reading code weren’t the parts called on for maths, leaving an open question as to whether programming should be taught as a maths-based skill or a language-based skill.”

They tested with Python, so this doesn’t really surprise me. I suspect strongly my own experience that testing with Python both under-estimates the language involvement vs. more linguistically expressive languages but also significantly under-estimates the maths involvement relative to more formal languages, especially function and array languages. There’s a marked separation between developers who see maths as essential to programming vs. those who see it as a language thing.

That they recruited from MIT, Tufts and immediate surroundings may well also affect their results.

Would be interesting to see a broader study.

  • @Sigmatics@lemmy.ca
    2•1 year ago

    It’s called a programming language for a reason

    As a professional software engineer, the number of times I actually have to use math skills is pretty low

    Even when I worked on a statistical application for lifetime prediction, most of the work wasn’t figuring out the correct math

    What’s leagues more important here is conceptual thinking and being able to model complex human-made constructs in your head

    • V HOP
      1•1 year ago

      Which is why it’s more surprising to me that it didn’t activate the language centre much, but I agree it’s not surprising that Python and ScratchJr didn’t seem to active the areas more relevant to maths either.

      I’ve had this fight on Hackernews many times with people who use Haskell, SML, or APL descendants like K or J etc., and I do think there may well be different results if you were to test those, because there seems to be a distinction where especially proponents of the latter tend to want programs they can sit down and read as a whole like mathematical theorem.

      E.g. I don’t know if you’ve seen Iversons infamous one page implementation of J (that page is for a Rust implementation, but the README contains the original unreadable C). I’ve met, face to face, J and K proponents who argue that this is a reasonable way to write C too. I could see those people triggering different parts of the brain while working, because they’re approaching programming in a way that makes me at least break out in hives (and earning lots of money doing so - these languages are mostly used in finance).

      I fully agree with you on the conceptual thinking part though.