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This research shows that aptitude for learning foreign languages is a stronger predictor of learning to program than basic maths knowledge. "These results provide a novel framework for understanding programming aptitude, suggesting that the importance of numeracy may be overestimated in modern programming education environments." Relating Natural Language Aptitude to Individual Differences in Learning Programming Languages. Prat, et.al. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60661-8 30 comments
 Of course now, I can only remember 6 words of high school French. But I was able to write a countdown timer webpage and a scraper to make playlists of songs on sites like Paste. 😉 @yabellini Haha this is gonna be great citation material to piss off so many techbros! @yabellini This is fascinating. Not entirely unrelated: back in the 90's the top dog of the company that gave me my first programming job told me that classical musicians made the best programmers. His argument was to do with aptitude for reading musical notation. @alanbuxton @yabellini When I started in IT (with a modern languages degree) in the late 80s/early 90s, the industry was expanding rapidly and needed to recruit from a wide range of backgrounds as there weren't enough CS graduates. So there were lots of liberal arts grads and women entering the field. It was only when universities ramped up CS grad production that the tech bros started to fill all the available entry-level roles. Must admit I miss the intellectual diversity we had back then.  Over the years, I have met a number of people who say that musical talent correlates with programming. And I've often said that musical notation is a simple programming language — with loops and conditional execution. I've been considered quite adept at programming, and have devoted my life to it. But I've always been terrible at music, and hopelessly bad at learning human languages. So I'm not sure … 🤔 @JeffGrigg @alanbuxton I am sorry but I am not aware of any studies that relate music skills to learning to program. Over the years, I've heard a number of people claim that music skills correlate with programming skills. Here is a discussion of it, with some references to (semi-)related studies: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1570/are-programmers-likely-to-be-musicians @yabellini @JeffGrigg @alanbuxton Has anyone tried? There's a lot of anecdotes about, but usually people say its because music is a form of applied mathematics, the utility of which is called into question by this new research. However, its also true that (classical) musicians learn many phrases in Italian and a small amount of Italian grammar. @celesteh @yabellini @alanbuxton It seems, from what little objective study information I've seen, that "smart people" are generally good at a number of things, typically including, music, computer programming, math, and other things too. I'm not seeing objective evidence that practicing music or programming will directly make you better at the other. @yabellini As one of those ppl who has learned 8 or so programming languages over the years and then barely used them this seems very very logical. "Grammar" and syntax is what you need to learn, not math. And I would argue that has been the case for a very long time. @WhyNotZoidberg @yabellini Indeed. I suspect the mental capacity and machinery you develop for understanding how different natural languages do very similar things (describing things/actions/properties, tense, case relationships, etc) is very relevant for understanding how different programming languages implement a much smaller set of things (control structures, variables, etc).  @yabellini very interesting - but having read the abstract only, I wonder whether this correlation is a general one for all programming languages or only for Python, which to me is one of the most readable programming languages.   @yabellini@fosstodon.org Numeracy is basically irrelevant for any modern programming, I'm not really surprised. @yabellini Das wundert mich wenig. Mathe als solche wird bei der Programmierung eigentlich kaum gebraucht - so mein Eindruck. Programmiersprachen lernen ist wie die Grammatik einer Sprache lernen, deren Sprecher sehr dumm sind und die schon minimale Fehler mit Schulterzucken quittieren. @yabellini Oops, Sorry about that. Here you go: That doesn't surprise me much. Math as such is hardly needed in programming - so my impression. Learning programming languages is like learning the grammar of a language whose speakers are very stupid and who shrug off even minimal mistakes.  @yabellini I have noticed that polyglot programmers also tend to study many natural languages  @yabellini oh dear. I was as bad at foreign languages as I was at a programming aptitude test in about 1980. All those lines of code ago 🤷♂️  @yabellini This is simultaneously obviously true and makes me irrationally angry that it's another thing that fucking Dijkstra was right about.  |
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This is sort of backwards to the gist of this paper, but way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, my university had a foreign language requirement. Computer "language" also met the requirement, so I minored in computer science.
Maybe Northern Arizona University was onto to something back then. 😉