Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!decwrl!megatest!djones
From: djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: language skills and programming (Re: Intro to CS ...)
Message-ID: <12855@goofy.megatest.UUCP>
Date: 7 May 90 22:25:25 GMT
References: <1990Apr29.050125.18851@light.uucp>
Organization: Megatest Corporation, San Jose, Ca
Lines: 20

From article <1990Apr29.050125.18851@light.uucp>, by bvs@light.uucp (Bakul Shah):
> 
> There are many programmers whose natural language skills are not
> on par with their programming skills.


My experience has been that among programmers there is a very high
correlation between language skills and programming ability. Every
excellent programmer I have known, without exception, has been equally adept
at speaking and writing. (This is not to say that all were initially
proficient at English, because to some English was a second or third
language.)

I have often heard a friend of mine, a math professor, say that the
scores on the math part of the SAT show almost no correlation with
success as a collegiate math major, but the scores on the verbal part
correlate almost exactly. I don't know where he got his data, but the
assertion has the "ring of truth".

As Wittgenstein and Russell tried to tell us, logic is language.