Teaching coding from the Metal Up or from the Glass*Back?

[DA-LION-619]

Maria on my team and I have been pairing (working in code and stuff together) occasionally in order to improve our coding and tech skills. We all have gaps and it’s a good idea to go over the “digital fundamentals” every once in a while to make sure you’ve got things straight. (Follow up post on this topic tomorrow.)

As we were whiteboarding and learning and alternating teaching each other (the best way to make sure you know a topic is to teach it to another person) I was getting the impression that, well, we weren’t feeling each other’s style.

Now, before we get started, yes, this is a “there’s two kinds of people in this world” post. But this isn’t age, background, or gender related from what I can tell. I just think folks are wired a certain way. Yes, this a post about generalities.

Here’s the idea. Just like there are kinesthetic learners and auditory learners and people who learn by repetition, in the computer world I think that some folks learn from the metal up and some folks learn from the glass back.

https://medium.com/@shanselman/teac...r-from-the-glass-back-190a32ce0579#.6acwks1n9

I'm the glass back type of individual.

 

[Thor]

Explain

 

[_kabal_]

Explain

Crazy idea I know, but did you try reading the article?

 

[Thor]

What is a metal up and glass back?

 

[Hamster]

"..pairing (working in code and stuff together)"

*sigh*

/reluctantly clicks

 

[Hamster]

Dafuq is the point of this article?

At least he has a disclaimer stating he'll be generalising. I suspect most devs are closer to being "glass back" as he describes it but really all he is doing is pointing out two obvious extremes.

That whole article can be summarised as "people learn in different ways and are motivated by different things".

No scht.

 

[rward]

What is a metal up and glass back?

Come on Thor

I clicked and skimmed the article for 8 seconds and figured out what each was.

 

[Thor]

Come on Thor

I clicked and skimmed the article for 8 seconds and figured out what each was.

I didn't click.

 

[scudsucker]

I didn't click.

I guess you are one of those metal-back developers then.



C'mon, I also didn't click but I immediately understood the concept. It is not hard.

 

[Thor]

Quick insults I see.

/leaves

 

[scudsucker]

Quick insults I see.

/leaves

Grow up.

 

[Thor]

Stay classy

 

[XennoX]

The concepts of metal-up and glass-back are not obvious?

Metal-up (CPU) = working at the lowest level, and graduating up through ever increasing levels of abstraction. So you start in low languages like ASM and C, working your way up until you get to the likes of C#, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, etc.

Glass-back (Monitor) = you work at the higher levels of abstraction with user-interfaces and front-end applications, and graduate down, increasingly getting involved in concepts like memory management, interfacing with hardware, and writing drivers.

 

[Thor]

The concepts of metal-up and glass-back are not obvious?

Metal-up (CPU) = working at the lowest level, and graduate up through ever increasing levels of abstraction. So you start in low languages like ASM and C, working your way up until you get to the likes of C#, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, etc.

Glass-back (Monitor) = you work at the higher levels of abstraction with user-interfaces and front-end applications, and graduate down, increasingly getting involved in concepts like memory management, interfacing with hardware, and writing drivers.

Sweet thank you.

 

[Beachless]

I've learned to do both but at heart I'm a metal up kind of person. I like looking under the hood and fiddling around there but if your audience is analysts and business people you have to do the presentation layer and forget about the under the hood stuff.

 

[Thor]

Your post makes it sound like you've gotten through life being spoon fed everything.

Worked out pretty good.

 

[XennoX]

I've learned to do both but at heart I'm a metal up kind of person. I like looking under the hood and fiddling around there but if your audience is analysts and business people you have to do the presentation layer and forget about the under the hood stuff.

<insert mulling-your-thoughts emoticon here>

Yes and no.

Yes - because yes, presentation is important.
No - because, as an end user I do not want to wait longer than it would take me to do the analysis in Excel. Proper algorithms and data structures make a world of difference to the user experience.

Both the metal and the glass need to function harmoniously and quickly.

 

[semaphore]

Quick insults I see.

/leaves

You get pissy when people call you out because you're to lazy to read an article. But then expect people to spoon feed you answers?

 

[Thor]

Sjoe that escalated quickly

 

[Hamster]

/enters

/pulls up chair

HEY GUYS!!! The fighting is in here!!!