用十年来学编程_中英对照.docVIP

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years Peter Norvig Why is everyone in such a rush? Walk into any bookstore, and youll see how to Teach Yourself Java in 7 Days alongside endless variations offering to teach Visual Basic, Windows, the Internet, and so on in a few days or hours. I did the following power search at A: pubdate: after 1992 and title: days and (title: learn or title: teach yourself) and got back 248 hits. The first 78 were computer books (number 79 was Learn Bengali in 30 days). I replaced days with hours and got remarkably similar results: 253 more books, with 77 computer books followed by Teach Yourself Grammar and Style in 24 Hours at number 78. Out of the top 200 total, 96% were computer books. The conclusion is that either people are in a big rush to learn about computers, or that computers are somehow fabulously easier to learn than anything else. There are no books on how to learn Beethoven, or Quantum Physics, or even Dog Grooming in a few days. Felleisen et al. give a nod to this trend in their book How to Design Programs, when they say Bad programming is easy. Idiots can learn it in 21 days, even if they are dummies. Lets analyze what a title like Learn C++ in Three Days could mean: Learn: In 3 days you wont have time to write several significant programs, and learn from your successes and failures with them. You wont have time to work with an experienced programmer and understand what it is like to live in a C++ environment. In short, you wont have time to learn much. So the book can only be talking about a superficial familiarity, not a deep understanding. As Alexander Pope said, a little learning is a dangerous thing. C++: In 3 days you might be able to learn some of the syntax of C++ (if you already know another language), but you couldnt learn much about how to use the language. In short, if you were, say, a Basic programmer, you could learn to write programs in the style of Basic using C++ syntax, but you couldnt learn wha