We see something that works, and then we understand it (opens in new tab)

(lemire.me)

65 pointssurprisetalk3d ago20 comments

20 comments

> As a teacher, I can tell you that students get really angry if you put a question on an exam that requires a concept not explicitly covered in class. Of course, if you work as an engineer and you’re stuck on a problem and you tell your boss it cannot be solved with the ideas you learned in college… you’re going to look like a fool.

Very flawed comparison. At work I get to go off and do research, experiments, can collaborate with peers and people who might have more expertise in a given sub problem, and generally have much more time. An exam trying to test you on material you haven’t studied is supposed to test for what? Your ability to synthesize knowledge out of thin air.

The rest of the article is well written and correct, but this particular aside felt weird.

6 more replies

noduermenew29m ago

The author is talking about two orthogonal problems.

1. "Thinkism": As described, over-engineering before writing code for a complex system and seeing where it takes you. Maybe decision by committee, or just overthinking. But its like one form of replacing on-the-ground adaptable, creative thinking, with a dumber process.

2. Which should be completely separate, it's saying that students are mad if they're forced to think for themselves. This is a complaint about underthinking and the tendency of inexperienced coders not to come up with a grand plan before writing a line of code.

So which one is the problem? I'd say the problem is not knowing when to over or under-think something.

JSR_FDED1h ago

As a kid I noticed that repairing things is the perfect way to combine experiential learning and "thinkism" - you have to develop a mental model of how something should work, what's broken, and how to fix it. Then you combine that with the physical sensations of how tight the nut is, or how hard you need to turn that wrench - which in turn feeds into the mental model and determination of next steps.

iceman28new26m ago

Like everything there’s always a balance. Sometimes building something and seeing how it works might have a higher cost to “correct” once built. Other times, it’s much faster to build.

cdavid2h ago

Did not know of the "thinkism" expression. When I was studying in France eng. school, I called that "the mythe du cerveau" (literaly "the brain myth", though does not roll on your tongue as well).

It is guaranteed failure mode of large orgs. Curious to hear about more references on how to fight this at an organization level, besides the one given in the OT.

2 more replies

AdityaAnuragi45m ago

Game developers are the best at this sort of stuff (especially valve and puzzle game designers)

Portal (a puzzle game by valve) had levels built in such a way that it introduced the player to new mechanic, and only then building on top of that

FailMore1h ago

I liked the article and the term thinkism (which I hadn’t heard before). I think education should be radically changed to be about doism instead. I think it’s likely we have more engaged kids learning more valuable life skills.

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kang30m ago

this misunderstands whats thinking is ..

> Thinkism sets aside practice and experience

thinking succeeds experience & precedes practise, its not apart from it

andai2h ago

I call this, the way to learn stuff is by doin' stuff.

Also buildin' stuff! (Which is the best type of doin'.)

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