I was very pleased about reading this article. For so long we have been swimming around lost in the at times non-sensical world of computer science education with no idea of where we lay in the broad spectrum of humanity. Now, at least, we have been given a telescope for which to see the moon.

Gosh, so writing programs may be a way to help induce the learning of problem solving in human beings. I like this thought. I like it a lot. Also, what was touched upon here, the notion of explicitly teaching the implicit, is also highly important.

For anyone can read a book and understand what they read. Anyone can listen to a person speak and hear the story that was told. All that is pretty easy and inherent in all of us. But teaching the insights that come with experience is crucial. Not only can a human being read or hear a story, perhaps now they can apply it to their life and walk away with something more than just an anecdote of someone's lives -- they can walk away changed.

And the author's point, I believe, is that programming can be like this too. Not only does someone understand how to semantically structure the syntax of a given program, but s/he gains more insight into general problem solving that can be used in any arena.

What I think is so important about this is not only in application with teaching, but with learning. It is very important for the student to know and understand why s/he is learning something particular. How many people felt that in CS15, or wherever they first learned to hack, that they were doing so to create nifty programs and that was all? I know I did. And I am just beginning to learn now the more insightful parts of programming.

A fork by itself is useless. With no context to understand what it is for or how it can be used we might only think of it as shaped metal at best. With an understanding of Western culture and culinary techniques we will be better able to understand what a fork is, why it was created, and how we can use it properly. All things need to be placed in proper context otherwise, as the author states, things may be only seen in one way, i.e. programming is only a trade skill.

When I first learned to program I thought I was doing it to learn the base of something that I would use in my career later. No matter what I ended up doing I was sure that programming would be a part of it. I thought that it was a job skill. But now it almost seems like a secretary might need to know how to program. And I don't want to be a secretary.