From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Fri Jun 25 1999 - 16:39:21 MDT
> Throwing rocks instead of thinking, the "them and us" social pattern,
> and, above all, vast emotional investments in something so incredibly
> trivial that I don't even have a word for it. Death to baseball. Teach
> the kiddies how to program a computer. (My little brother just wrote
> his first function! In Python, BTW - it really is the best language for
> learning these things.)
A kid who has played baseball is far better prepared to face the
realities of life than one who has done nothing but write code.
The latter, for example, will have a very deterministic control-
oriented view of life: write the code correctly, and it will
produce the right result, and you have complete control of that.
In baseball (and life) even if you are the best batter in the
league, you will fail over 60% of the time because of blind chance
and other inputs beyond your control. Yet your long-term success
will still depend on your own talent and how you deal with those
external influences.
A programmer always has time to consider choices. A ballplayer
must often make decisions in the instant: when that comebacker
reaches the mound, you must decide in the time it takes to turn
around whether to throw to second to get the lead runner or take
the safer play at first. Your decision may well affect the
outcome of the game, and you may not have time to even look at
the runners before you make it. And the result of that choice
will be recorded for history. Developing instincts--and the
ability to change those when conditions change, such as when the
runner is slow or fast--is vital to succes in baseball and life.
When that kid is done hacking games and wants to get a job--do
you think ey'll be prepared to contribute to a company, work
with marketers, managers, lawyers, salespeople, and others on
eir team if ey has never experienced those dynamics?
I chose software as my primary career, but I know I learned more
about life on the baseball diamond and the poker table than I
will ever learn from the net, even with full-blown VR.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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