Freedom in the rearview mirror

[f_tte]

How does a programming language simply change ones life? It doesn't, not simply. I sit at the coffee table oft in the evening, with my two young girls, and attempt to further my knowledge of perl. My oldest (six), peers over my shoulder and reads an if statement. She askes me about the symbols, and seems pleased with her ability to read a little code. We now begin a discussion about scope, and i try to relate to her and her sister how these things (symbols, flow control, and what), carry into our everyday lives. A good bit of head nodding and questions, smiling and nose wrinkling, and we run out of electricity. We decide to go and get some petrol for the generator. As we are creeping up the mile plus of our deteriorating driveway, they take advantage of dad's lenience, pile into the front seat and let the pine boughs brush up against thier hands. The older says "look at all of that freedom", as she adjusts the mirror on the passenger door. Her younger sister replies "theres more than one way to do it.", changed one fathers life for good.

[zentara]

It sounds like you are giving your daughters a "head start" in programming. It's like music. The best way to give a child an appreciation and interest in music, is to play an instrument and sing with them, when they are young. It somehow builds neural pathways automatically because they are so young.

I can just see 15 years from now, a post here on perlmonks,

"my dad started showing me Perl when I was little, and now I'm writing this module........".

[Gekitsuu]

That's a very touching story; it's nice to hear people embrace sharing information rather than stifling up and saying something like "It's too complicated" or "You wouldn't understand it yet". Personally when I try to share Perl with most of my friends/family they look at me like I've grown another head.

[monarch]

That programming languages can reflect life is something I agree with you on: particularly concepts such as "model-view-controller". Consider that we as humans are all data, the view is the media, and control is the governments. Does this mean that a different culture contains human beings fundamentally different to us? No. We are all just data, manipulated and viewed in different ways.

I would go further to suggest that Engineering (or applied sciences) are reflective of almost every other subject. Consider psycology. Students/practicing psycologists consider themselves able to analyse others.. yet I believe this is nonsense. The Nyquist theorem states that to reproduce a signal you must sample at twice the highest frequency of the source.. and correspondingly I believe you can't analyse someone else unless you're twice as smart as they are.. otherwise someone smarter may appear much dumber as you instead interpret a baseband response.

Systems and Control, and Fourier Analysis says a lot more about the world and human behaviour than all the other self-proclaimed experts. But of course, how would they understand this?

[salva]

The Nyquist theorem states that ...

that is nonsense, you are extrapolating a rule from one domain to another completelly different, you are incurring into a false analogy.

Following your reasoning, one could also assert that maps are useless because they have to be twice the size of the land they represent.

[monarch]

I'm not so sure the analogy is as purported..

Remember, that to completely describe and render the land that is represented by a map it, indeed, must be sampled at twice the resolution of the finest point you want to represent. However when viewing a map all you're interested in is the general shape and scale of a landmass, not every blade of grass. Hence it is acceptable to sample at a lower frequency that still represents the view you're looking for.

Understanding the nuances of a human being, however, is incredibly complex. From your post, then, do you believe you can summarise and analyse your fellow mates accurately with the limited view you have of them? Do you understand what it is to be them? Have you got a large enough sample?

Whilst your post is a good warning against mistakenly applying one theorem from a known domain to another, it would help if you explained your confidence in the reply given above..