>> There's more to it than that: writing is thinking. If you stop writing code, you aren't thinking anymore.
Humans have been thinking long before writing was invented. Why is code special?
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> Humans have been thinking long before writing was invented.
And look how poorly they did it until they invented writing.
> Why is code special?
You don't get better at thinking without doing. With code the "doing" part is writing.
In your view, it is reasonable to expect HS students to thoroughly read a book on trigonometry and then ace the exam? We know, from experience, that only by doing problems does the student actually learn. We also know that when you stop doing problems the facility atrophys.
Why is code different?
> And look how poorly they did it until they invented writing.
How can you know how poorly they did it?
> How can you know how poorly they did it?
Their lack of progress. Humans existed in the same basic form for around 100k years before they finally invented agriculture, which led to some improvements, and then rapid progress once writing was invented.
Improvements or just new ways to be occupied and more work? It seems life without agriculture and the like was way simpler and chilled.
Until winter.
Humans have been storing food for winter for hundreds of thousands of years before agriculture and the invention of writing, you think they all died off or something? People whose crops failed instead were more heavily affected in winter than hunter gatherers.
Of course, but the surpluses made possible by agriculture meant occasional starvation became a much rarer event
> then rapid progress once writing was invented.
While I mostly agree with this notion, given that all of our understanding of human progress historically comes from writing, there's a selection effect happening here.
Like, why do we talk about the Dark Ages? Because there was less writing, so obviously things were terrible.
> While I mostly agree with this notion, given that all of our understanding of human progress historically comes from writing, there's a selection effect happening here.
There's a bit of a selection bias there, because writing itself is used as a measurement of progress.
But, ignoring writing as a measurement of progress, we can pretty much see that for about 100k years the only tech were primitive tools.
Even after the domestication of wolves (about 40k years ago) there were no visible improvement in tech. After agriculture (10k-12k years ago, maybe?), there's visible progress in tech (tools), but not by much, and visible improvement in societies (also, not by much).
Enter writing - those civilisations that had more advanced writing progressed rapidly, and those that did not barely progressed at all, tech-wise.
Because not all civilisations progressed at the same rate, we can see quite clearly that writing is highly correlated[1] with progress.
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[1] While correlation does not imply causation, as the data mounts it lends more and more weight to the causation bit.
If writing is a natural tech you unlock on an already exponential curve it would always correlate with progress. And so many thousands of other tech.
> If writing is a natural tech you unlock on an already exponential curve it would always correlate with progress.
That's a big "If". The observation we have is that civilisations that never invented writing simply died out with no tech-tree advancement; and this happened for 100k years at least.
We've got 100k years of "no writing, no tech". We've got around 5k years of "with writing came tech".
The actual tech to write was there for much of the 100k years (cave art), but without writing, the tech never improved.
>> And look how poorly they did it until they invented writing.
> How can you know how poorly they did it?
You could probably get some sense by comparing illiterate people to literate people.
>>Humans have been thinking long before writing was invented.
>And look how poorly they did it until they invented writing.
Yeah, look how poorly they did it until they invented writing.
[peers into the dim ancient past]
Sorry, my time-machine spectacles are on leave or on strike today.
And congrats on being a multi-millen(ium)arian, and a mind reader, who could both 1) exist so far back in the past, and 2) be able to know the thoughts of people who didn't write them down, because they didn't know writing.
/s
It's like math in school. I wasn't good at math in school because I thought that understanding the concepts was enough. But without actually putting pen to paper and drilling through math problems you quickly get lost. It's a skill issue.
I specifically liked math and physics because these were something I didn't have to memorize or repeat constantly.
While other subjects felt forced rote memorization. Same with code though. Writing things down feels like a chore mostly, so I am personally glad AI is here.
I didn't mean rote memorization, which I agree is what other subjects were like, we used to say "campaign learning", because we studied the material just for the exams. But with math problems for me the trouble is that I didn't put in the work, I would see for example equations solved on the blackboard and it made perfect sense at the time, but because I would skip practicing at home, I would forget some of the steps and would get stuck.
> I specifically liked math and physics because these were something I didn't have to memorize or repeat constantly. While other subjects felt forced rote memorization. Same with code though. Writing things down feels like a chore mostly, so I am personally glad AI is here.
I am skeptical that you were able to get any good at Maths or Physics without drilling problems.
have you tried thinking for a long time without writing anything down?
You will get to a point that you have to write it down so you don't forget but more importantly check if it even compiles.
Yes in three specific environments for varying durations. Lying down to sleep, showering and driving.
Each last for a different amount of time and you generally can’t write or even read anything. But in my personal experience, all three lead to solving the most difficult software problems.
Fair. But in all 3 did you very quickly write down the solution as soon as you were able?
My best thinking is when I am going for very long runs, when I write down the thought, my brain stops thinking about it, considers it done and moves on.
When writing, thoughts become forced and linear in my view as opposed to floating in a specific way from point to point. Like I lose the natural creativity.
Writing is about remembering or communicating, so it is summarizing the thoughts, but it is not thinking itself, it is more so thinking about how to communicate efficiently or how to make a note so you don't forget. It is not creativity for me.
Kind of imagine building an idea in your head while running and then you write down the summary of it.
I see, I'm the same too. Throughout my day my thoughts would be flying and zooming around. Some of them good, most of them not good or otherwise useless.
When I sit down to try and write them down, I blank out. Or the thoughts that I thought were good/useful, I second guess when writing them down. Perhaps it's just lack of practice on writing them down (I'm trying to use a typewriter to do so recently).
writing is a way to get your brain to put thoughts into a form that someone else will be able to reach the same understanding as yourself. The effort to explain oneself often leads to better understanding: Duck Debugging basically.
Writing changed everything. You barely (if at all) can tell me what humans in the past were thinking without relying on some written artifact.
That is a joke, right? E.g. as in there was no writing therefore no evidence of people having had thoughts?