[techtalk] This talk of N-ary trees and other things...

[Nancy Corbett]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Makiko Itoh wrote:

> Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on how 
> learning human languages, or the ability to, translates to the 
> ability to learn programming languages, or vice versa? Both my 
> husband and I are multilingual and we often talk about how learning 
> languages kind of helps us to get a "programmer head", if that makes 
> sense.
> 

YES!!!  We talk about that a lot where I work.  My company is crawling
with people who have advanced math degrees.  I affectionatly call 'em
"Those Math People."  They took to computer languages so easily.  I, on
the other hand, am degreed in Comparative Literature (yes, I know how to
say, "Would you like fries with that?").  We've had many good discussions
about my background in grammar and language studies as my backbone vs.
their math backgrounds when approaching learning new development skills.  

I really think that "Those Math People" are way ahead of me in many
respects, but my education has found many uses in this field.

Nancy