[randomsearch]

My answer would be "yes, but perhaps eventually they've bootstrapped themselves where they can escape examples."

Everyone learns better starting from examples. Humans are inductive learners. Makes sense, given our situation.

However, from our starting point some people meta-learn abstract reasoning i.e. mathematics, which doesn't come naturally. Maths is hard because it isn't the way we usually think.

Often those people claim to find purely theoretical approaches better for learning, although I'm personally sceptical from attending a decade of seminars and classes at many institutions; people presenting a purely theoretical introduction to a topic are immediately hit with requests for examples. And usually criticised for not starting with examples. But I do not usually attend lectures in maths departments (rather than related subjects, e.g. CS).

[feanaro]

I remain sceptical of your scepticism since I'm one of those people that gets fidgety when someone wants to explain something to me using examples. It's not that I don't appreciate examples too, but starting with a high-level, abstract explanation clicks much more easily, especially for CS/math topics.