TITLE: "Most Happiness Comes From Friction"
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: July 14, 2012 11:01 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2012-07.html#e2012-07-13T12_02_28.htm">
   Last time</A>,
I mentioned again the value in having students learn broadly
across the sciences and humanities, including computer science.
This is a challenge going in both directions.  Most students
like to concentrate on one area, for a lot of different
reasons.  Computer science looks intimidating to students in
other majors, perhaps especially to the humanities-inclined.

There is hope.  Earlier this year, the Harvard Magazine ran
<A HREF="http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/03/the-frisson-of-friction">
   The Frisson of Friction</A>,
an essay by Sarah Zhang, a non-CS student who decided to take
CS 50, Harvard's intro to computer science.  Zhang tells the
story of finding a thorny, semicolon-induced bug in a program
(an extension for Google's Chrome browser) on the eve of her
21st birthday.  Eventually, she succeeded.  In retrospect, she
writes:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Plenty of people could have coded the same extension more
elegantly and in less time.  I will never be as good a programmer
as -- to set the standard absurdly high -- Mark Zuckerberg.  But
accomplishments can be measured in terms relative to ourselves,
rather than to others.  Rather than sticking to what we're
already good at as the surest path to r&eacute;sum&eacute;-worthy
achievements, we should see the value in novel challenges.  How
else will we discover possibilities that lie just beyond the
visible horizon?

...  Even the best birthday cake is no substitute for the deep
satisfaction of accomplishing what we had previously deemed
impossible -- whether it's writing a program or writing a play.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

The essay addresses some of the issues that keep students from
seeking out novel challenges, such as fear of low grades and
fear of looking foolish.  At places like Harvard, students who
are used to succeeding find themselves boxed in by their friends'
expectations, and their own, but those feelings are familiar to
students at any school.  Then you have advisors who subtly
discourage venturing too far from the comfortable, out of their
own unfamiliarity and fear.  This is a social issue as big as
any pedagogical challenge we face in trying to make introductory
computer science more accessible to more people.

With work, we can help students feel the deep satisfaction that
Zhang experienced.  Overcoming challenges often leads to that
feeling.  She quotes a passage about programmers in Silicon
Valley, who thrive on such challenges: "Most happiness probably
comes from friction."  Much satisfaction and happiness come out
of the friction inherent in making things.  Writing prose and
writing programs share this characteristic.

Sharing the deep satisfaction of computer science is a problem
with many facets.  Those of us who know the satisfaction know
it's a problem worth solving.
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