At What Age is it Easier to Learn? 103
Maria D asks: "At what age do people learn faster? Suppose you want to learn to write code at a certain level. What age ranges will absorb the lessons the best? There is surprisingly little research on post-early-childhood development. A language won't be quite native if you start learning it after five or so, but what about adult differences? From informal observations in graduate schools, I've concluded that older people learn faster because of their experience in learning techniques, which seems so counterintuitive!"
FP (Score:1, Offtopic)
Age 3 and lower...
Thought experiment (Score:1)
Re:Thought experiment (Score:2)
Re:Thought experiment (Score:1)
Re:Thought experiment (Score:2)
i started perl programming at 12 and to start with found
I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:4, Insightful)
Linguistics appears to be totally opposite. Though there are animals that can learn very basic linguistic abilities, though they are able to do many things that *look* like language, no chimpanzee, gorilla, or other (dolphins, etc) has ever been shown to actually use language. Likewise, no matter how much fundamental knowledge of grammar you possess, translating that knowledge into easily learning another language as a fluent language is extrodinarily difficult or even impossible (I'm learning two dead languages, Latin and Greek, so I feel confident to make this sort of statement).
Children aren't good at doing all of the componentry involved in learning computer code. It's impossible to explain memory allocation to someone who doesn't yet possess the ability to understand basic math (it's hard to teach it to someone who DOES understand basic math!).
I think the best age, personally, is someplace in upper middle school - around grade 7 or 8. Once you've got algebra, functions and expressions make logical sense. Proofs - geometry and others - make a great corrolary to code. You're given a set of known commands and asked to solve a larger problem.
So, anyway. Right before geometry, and continuing through it, probably would be the best time.
Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:5, Insightful)
I used legos to teach memory allocation to 4th graders, and I'm pretty sure the same method would work with younger kids. Pretty easy to have a heap of legos, and "allocate" certain block sizes to different building projects, which is no different than basic memory allocation (including the importance of "releasing" ownership of a block so that somebody else can use it). I'm always amazed at the math majors who think that without higher math, higher math concepts can't be explained in concrete terms.
It can be done! But what about the speed? (Score:1)
I *AM* the Person to Ask on This... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I *AM* the Person to Ask on This... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I *AM* the Person to Ask on This... (Score:2)
Re:I *AM* the Person to Ask on This... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:I *AM* the Person to Ask on This... (Score:1)
Re:I *AM* the Person to Ask on This... (Score:2)
Re:I *AM* the Person to Ask on This... (Score:1)
Re:I *AM* the Person to Ask on This... (Score:2)
Re:I *AM* the Person to Ask on This... (Score:1)
Development and experience issues? (Score:2, Insightful)
Suppose we pick tasks that are not beyond people's development levels, such as riding a skateboard, or programming a goto operation
Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:2)
I'm not sure which definition of language you're using -- spoken communication or communicating ideas and concepts through any means -- but Koko the gorilla [koko.org] is just one example of animals other than humans using language. You can easily find more by searching the Web.
Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:3, Informative)
Koko is capable of using pseudo-language. Real language is generative and recombinatorial.
Koko and other gorillas/chimps/bonobos can do things like "me me food me me me food", "banana give banana give banana me banana" or identify symbols that stand for people or objects. Some can count (see Alex the parrot, very cool stuff). But none actually use a real language.
I feel somewhat justified to answer *this* question as I do research on animal cognition.
Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:2)
Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:3, Interesting)
There ar
Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:1)
Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:1)
Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:2)
Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:2)
At 5/6 I started basic programming. Woo.
And yes, my handwriting sucks.
Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This... (Score:2)
it helps to be able to read... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, she's learning. She enjoys sounding out various words and spelling them. But she's gonna have a pretty difficult time writing programs and debugging code until she can read and understand various error messages. I think about the earliest you can expect learning to code to be productive is around 7 years old.
Re:it helps to be able to read... (Score:1)
Re:it helps to be able to read... (Score:2)
Re:it helps to be able to read... (Score:2)
Now I fear that there isn't so much of this. nothing is a sandbox, and for a kid to really learn programming now, they have to open up visual basic or what not. It's certainly not the way it used to be and i think it's kinda sad.
Meh.
Re:it helps to be able to read... (Score:1)
Different strokes.. (Score:1)
Re:Different strokes.. (Score:1)
Re:Different strokes.. (Score:1)
Feh! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm past 40 and whenever it's about what interests me the most, I have no problem learning new stuff.
Re:Feh! (Score:2)
Yes, but when we were 10, we learned everything - whether we were interested in it or not. Bet you have some pop music floating around in your head that you'd just as soon forget, eh?
A.
(who has some of that pop music in his own head)
Re:Feh! (Score:1)
Re:Feh! (Score:1)
Man, (Score:1)
Re:Feh! (Score:1)
Re:Feh! (Score:2)
Coupled with that, if you exercise your brain by learning new things it gets easier to learn new things too. Research has also indicated that people with active brains are less likely to suffer from degenerative brain
Training (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Training (Score:1)
But let us suppose we don't go into these issues, and restrict ourselves to training as such, to skills. Adults learn skills, too, sometimes. At what age is training the fastest?
Not so much a specific age group (Score:3, Insightful)
The more important factors are desire and motivation. Learning a new language just because some management-level hack thinks it will be the next great thing(tm) could make any age-group lag behind. Learning a new language because it resolves a lot of the issues and difficulties encountered in an already known language or because it is necessary for the project one wishes to work on makes age irrelevant.
Re:Not so much a specific age group (Score:1)
Re:Not so much a specific age group (Score:2)
It's counterintuitive, but IRC you're correct (Score:2)
Basically adults have more places to fit new knowledge into. Children have to learn everything from scratch, which is a bit harder. However children haven't already learnt a particular way to move their mouth, throat and tongue; so they learn accent very well. Adults have already learnt a different way to move them, and relearning this is harder.
Re:It's counterintuitive, but IRC you're correct (Score:2)
Re:It's counterintuitive, but IRC you're correct (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's counterintuitive, but IRC you're correct (Score:1)
Re:It's counterintuitive, but IRC you're correct (Score:1)
There was an interesting article published recently in the New Scientist magazine in the UK ( http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524 814.900 [newscientist.com] - unfortunately only a preview). which talks about a lot of work going on about hyperglots (people who are able to speak 6 languages or more) and about the facility for language being stronger in some people than in others. The facility didn't appear to be age dependent either. I still think there's something in what you say, though.
I think that reducin
Re:It's counterintuitive, but IRC you're correct (Score:1)
Thank you for the article. The hyperglots I new personally said that it is a big experience to learn your second language, and still big and different experience to learn the third language, and then it "gets easy." It strangely reminded me of what mothers of many kids say. One kid turns your life upside-down (like first language a
Re:It's counterintuitive, but IRC you're correct (Score:2)
I see this also in the way that adults have more ways where they can apply the knowledge, so they understand why the new knowledge is useful and interesting. I'm a math/science teacher in a junior high school, and I'm constantly faced by the question "Where do we need this?"
Re:It's counterintuitive, but IRC you're correct (Score:1)
Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? I'm sure that nobody has studied "the best time to learn a computer language", but if you've done a real survey of the literature, I'm sure you can synthesize your own answer superior to pretty much anything you can read here.
My own conjecture is that "developer ability" (the ability to construct your own abstractions, and use others effectively) as opposed to mere "coder abilitity" (the ability to make code "do this" and "do that") is probably almost directly correlated to mathematical ability, both in the K-12 and upper-level-college senses of the term. In fact I suspect there would be an almost direct parallel between the "numerical manipulation" skills that constitutes most math in a K-12 education, and the ability to do math at a Mathematician's level. To use the somewhat-out-of-date-but-still-useful Piaget naming, "concrete operational" vs. "formal operational".
I'm not saying the two are identical, just that the cognitive skillsets are so similar that the development literature for math is likely to apply quite directly to coding. Trying to teach an average six-year-old "Object Orientation" is probably too much abstraction for them; they may learn to manipulate pre-existing objects but I'd bet that until they become "formal operational" they will have a hard time creating good objects of their own.
OO here is just an example; functional, for instance, I'd expect to be even harder to really grasp in the general case. You could teach simple map and filter, but they aren't going to get the full richness. Again, on average.
So this is a meta-answer: I don't know the answer to your question, and 99 out of 100 people posting won't either. But I can refer you to the literature on learning math and guess that it is as likely to apply as anything, with the mapping I've given you here. I can't be sure, but it's a good guess. And I'm pretty there's been a lot of study on that topic.
(People rushing to reply to this are encouraged to be sure they understand the meaning of "concrete" and "formal operational", and the meaning of the word "average". If so, fire away, but I'm sick of people mentally editing qualifiers like "average" or "most" out of my messages and then firing with all cannons as if they weren't there, and if you don't know those Piaget terms you don't really know what I said here.)
(And while I've defined the terminology, I'm going to point out a lot of people who think they are "developers" are in fact "coders", at least as evidenced by the source code I've seen both in closed and open source projects. Few people seem capable of creating decent abstractions.)
Re:Really? (Score:2)
For a concrete way to teach object orientation, I suggest a turtle graphics engine, in a Lisp-like extensible language. Logo used to be ideal for this- anybody know where I can get a hold of a de
Re:Really? (Score:2)
http://www.talkaboutprogramming.com/group/comp.la
Re:Really? (Score:2)
Re:Really? (Score:1)
Not 50+, that's for sure. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not 50+, that's for sure. (Score:1)
Middle School (Score:1)
Re:Middle School (Score:1)
I've done it at many levels (Score:1)
Re:I've done it at many levels (Score:1)
Re:I've done it at many levels (Score:1)
Re:I've done it at many levels (Score:1)
Re:I've done it at many levels (Score:1)
Re:I've done it at many levels (Score:1)
Re:I've done it at many levels (Score:2)
It depends really...I'm 15 now, I started when I was 7 (8086 ASM, then BASIC, C++, C, etc. etc) I understand a fair amount of the abstract stuff, and I can do it in my head.
But there are some skills that can't be developed that easily, mostly in the implementation part. F
30 is good (Score:1)
Re:mid 20s (Score:1)
No subject... why woudl there be a subject? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Depends on the content to learn (Score:1)
Motivation! (Score:2, Insightful)
Aiming for a PhD after a score of years in corporate environment, I agree. It is somewhat easier to learn when you have real life experience to which you can attach the book knowledge.
But let's also not forget a major factor: MOTIVATION. Teens and even college kids don't necessarily have a clear motivation to learn, older peop
Re:Motivation! (Score:1)
Re:Frowny face. (Score:1)
Easier to learn what? (Score:2)
I imagine it varies [for computer coding] according to the specific persons development. Also are you talking about coding effectively in a commercial environment (where social skills are vital) or lone-coding in your bedroom/study. Vastly different environments
For me, I peaked a
Easier to learn (Score:2)
How to properly study it? (Score:2)
My experience... (Score:2)
Music is another example. I plateaued my piano learning at the age of about 12, then gave up altogether (bad teacher too, but my own lack of motivation was a huge part). Then, at the age of 42, I discovered the violin. I'v
Some things are difficult at all ages (Score:1)
Use of Exceptions in C++ as they were intended is the biggest. I've yet to meet anyone except the guys who write the books, who uses them properly. Even many web sites and tutorials that explain exceptions do it wrongly.
This is next followed by the use of virtual functions correctly, as laid out in the C++ FAQs book. Programmers I run into tinker with virtual functions without really making the jump to basing their code
Re:Some things are difficult at all ages (Score:2)
Could you possibly go into
Re:Some things are difficult at all ages (Score:2)
I like C++ a lot but exception handling without a finally block or automatic garbage collection is immensely difficult.
Re:Some things are difficult at all ages (Score:2)
GCC supports nested functions (i think), would that make it any easier? I've never used it (maybe it was some weird dream, I've had a few), but could you could just free all the allocated memory inside the dunction in a nested cleanup function, called at th
cognitive ability declines with age (Score:3, Informative)
"Most studies show that, in general, cognitive abilities are the greatest when people are in their 30s and 40s. Cognitive abilities stay about the same until the late 50s or early 60s, at which point they begin to decline, but to only a small degree. The effects of cognitive changes are usually not noticed until the 70s and beyond."