A logical mind, not a programming mind: Psychology of a professional
end-user <
http://www.ppig.org/papers/22nd-EUP-1.pdf>
"For his part, J. accepted his responsibility in part as an educational
one, providing C. with valuable skills that would enable her to be more
effective when carrying out future programming work. Given that the two
had comparable professional seniority, this educational objective often
amounted to a clash of alternative intellectual styles. In the
educational approach taken by J., the future development needs described
by C. could be achieved more effectively by adopting more abstract
analysis and problem-solving strategies – strategies that are completely
characteristic of programming work. However, as described in the
Attention Investment model (Blackwell 2002), abstract strategies can be
expensive ones, requiring greater initial investment of attention, with
potentially low return, or even negative return. When pursuing the
educational objectives in his collaborative relationship with C., J. was
therefore acting as an advocate of a more abstract strategy, attempting
to persuade her that she should adjust the attention investment decision
factors that she already applied. In many of their conversations, C.
resisted this advice, saying that she would prefer to make progress on
the specific, concrete, problem that had motivated the project in the
first place. For his part, J. tried to persuade her that it would be in
her long-term interest to address not just this particular problem, but
the general category of problems of this type, or indeed the general
capabilities to be acquired by gaining experience of the most general
capabilities of the programming language. "
