Over on LtU I was asked how to help beginning programmers become self-directed learners. I have taught a number of students, but not in a context where I’ve been able to really make a difference in their programming practice, so I don’t have an answer to the whole question (though my instinct is that the apprenticeship method is the right way to go). However I try to teach one process that I think is an essential step towards becoming a self-directed learner. That process is the big idea called science, and I’m not talking about lab coats and chunky glasses

When working with students I always get asked what the result of evaluating some piece of code will be. What I tell the students is toask the computer via a test case or the REPL. Testing ideas by experimentation is science in its simplest and most immediate form, and a crucial step in developing the student’s ability to solve their own problems.

Application of science to programming is not restricted to students;test-driven development is science. So what is science then? I simplify, but basically three things: a theory to test, an experiment to test it, and a standard of proof (note we can never truly prove a theory, just simply not be able to disprove it). This is exactly when a unit test is. For example, a Scheme programmer might pose the theory “the string->number function will convert strings padded with whitespace characters to numbers”, formulate the experiment(equal? (string->number “ 200”) 200), and have as the standard of proof the boolean output of this single experiment.

When most people think of the scientific method they think of the lengthy and expensive double-blind trials used in, for example, medical trials. A really important point is to realise that when you do science, you choose the standard of proof. For example, as most computer programs are deterministic a few tests can be sufficient to show a property holds. When dealing with a concurrent program, or some other non-deterministic system, you may need to be more rigourous.

So there we have it. All programmers are scientists to some extent, though they might not know it. We can extend the use of experimentation to answer other questions, such as determining if productivity is affected by changes to software development process. Doing this in a lightweight way is the intention of the Simple Improvement package, though I haven’t had the time to get that library to a really useful state. Perhaps in a later post I’ll go through the ideas behind it. In the mean time, get experimenting (lab coats optional).