Too strong? Maybe, but if you think about it, all great inventions and successful products happened after many wrong turns and yes, failures. It’s how we learn. We’re actually wired that way. A baby learns to walk, talk, etc. by trying and failing. It’s cute when Johnny takes his first steps and falls down. “Look, he’s learning, Wow!”.
Somehow, we think that’s not the way it should be when we are all grown up (as middle schoolers!). WRONG!
Schools are full of testing and it’s a bummer to get called out for wrong answers. Big time negative. Miss too many, and you hear, “I hate X!”, where X can be math, science, literature, history — almost any subject. Get enough negative feedback and it’s “give up time”.
Folks need to understand that to complete any project successfully, requires many steps. Many of those steps result in finding out that you took the wrong approach and need to think of another (better) way. Smart folks know this and design the solution steps so that the failures are not too painful (expensive). Think: test markets!
Once “failure” becomes part of the process, it’s no big (negative) deal. “Super, that doesn’t work, so we don’t have to waste our time to go that way” becomes a common phrase. Early failure is good.
Nowhere better to get comfortable with this process than programming a computer. The computer doesn’t know anything about you personally, who your parents are, how smart you are, how rich — poor. AND you cannot “pressure” it. “I need it working by 10 o’clock” is not a command that it understands!
It just tries to execute the recipe (program) that you give it. First, the program has to have the correct syntax and then the computer will execute the instructions — no matter what. (Not good to issue the instruction ”blow yourself up”, because if it were a legal instruction, it would do just that!)
It’s designed the many steps to get to the solution. Learn from each step. Tricky, for sure, but you get better at it with practice and experience.
Join SuperSOLVRS, it’s a start.
