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simont

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philipstorry.livejournal.com	Tue 2006-05-16 23:07
The top down system can work, but only with some people. I can't claim to have learnt from the top-down system really - I started with BASIC and peeks/pokes on a Spectrum, then moved to BASIC and x86 assembler on an IBM 8086 PC. Given that the most complex layer model there is effectively DOS -> BIOS -> Hardware, there's not much top to look down from... Whether you call them abstractions, models or systems - we learn by building systems in our heads. Or at least, some people do. I seem to recall that some researchers think that the same impulse which causes men to be train spotters also causes them to be good hunters. They learn what travels where and when, and gradually come to know why this is. They are effectively building a ground-up model of how a railway is run, much as good hunters build models of which animals eat/drink/forage/hunt. Trainspotting is an innate survival skill in some people... Mostly men, but still innate. That ability to build a model is essential for these kinds of abstractions. I believe that for people with a strong modelling ability, it won't matter where you start them - top or bottom, they'll prod it and poke it until their model is usefully complete, and then move on. For the rest of humanity, bottom up is probably easier. But they will also lack that "instinctive" ability to grasp what has gone wrong. The same applies to support staff, by the way. This isn't just developers. I've trained plenty of support staff - some will be able to build those models and will do well, the others will be script readers. The script readers struggle with even basic scripting - the modellers will simply see scripting and basic programming as an extension of their work in support. A different use for the same model... Bottom up is a better way to teach. But some people will just find their way anyway, because that's the way their minds work. Yes, we want to teach properly - but for those truly suited to working with computers, this won't be a long-term problem. They'll be able to switch between bottom-up and top-down models anyway...
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