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by aleph_minus_one
11 days ago
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> I remember a fellow in high school that just could not accept that = in programming is assignment not an equation (like in high school math) The English noun "mist" has a different meaning than the German noun "[der] Mist" (dung, crap). Or the French "[la] infusion" has a different meaning (herbal tea) than the English "infusion" and the German "[die] Infusion". So, you are very used to the situation that in different languages, terms can have different meaning, so also in, say, C versus mathematics. |
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However, people really do have a great deal of trouble with this exact concept. Its a common test to give to people to define a function with a misleading name, like multiplyByTwo(int x, int y), and then show them the code inside (return x/y) and ask what this results in. Surprisingly many non programmers have a great deal of trouble with the idea that the name can be different to the behavior, especially in cases where its subtly different not entirely like this.
Other fields have similar issues, where people have trouble with this sort of abstract thinking, divorcing abstract knowledge about a thing from its appearence. iirc its a stage in child psychology and development, and shows up in teenage years after puberty. Many adult people never develop it fully, and struggle with this to a greater or lesser extent