After a year plus of having written this, I'm finally seeing his view become more and more mainstream. Heartening!
https://twitter.com/o_guest/status/842794088315404288 …
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I'm with, I believe, @.worrydream and probably @.EdwardTufte and maybe Alan Kay – I think most of our cognitive potential comes from the cognitive tools we use. IDEs are _cognitive tools_, as much as algebra, group theory, or knowing logical fallacies.
They're not a crutch any more than algebra is. I'd go as far as to say society and the cognitive tools it grants us are what distinguishes us from "prehistoric" humans. The hardware's barely changed. But the tools make us more.
And this is why I am very frustrated with the tooling that exists around contemporary software engineering. I think it's extremely poor, and an enormous hinderance to our abilities.
So – I'm not a Matlab user, and it may well be a dreadful IDE! There are lots of poor cognitive tools out there that lead us astray and stop us thinking well (eg, powerpoint & pi charts). But cognitive tools themselves, and IDEs in principle, are not the problem. IMHO.
And also – I do agree that you might get some benefit / insight from forgoing powerful cognitive tools (eg, algebra) for a while to see what happens. But I don't think it's generally good advice.
Any more than wearing boxing gloves to play violin, or walking in concrete boots, or painting a wall with a toothbrush, or using imperial is going to be broadly educational. It might be an interesting experience though.
Incidentally, as a counter argument, I did not a single time correctly spell "cognitive" in the above without my spell checker first putting a nice red line under "cognative". So that might be a crutch for me ;-)
Last last thing! To steal your analogy… a great way to learn bike riding (worked on my 3 kids and me) is to take off the _pedals_ (and awful "training wheels"). It's the full bike experience + progressive disclosure, but without the distraction and difficulty of pedalling.
I think it kind of works best once you have something working the easy way, then “right, how does this work underneath?” has a bit more interest as a question, esp if it’s also “I had these problems and I don’t really know why”
Yeah, well that's kind of online with the training wheels metaphor.
Ah, … that's interesting. I'm just slightly drunk, and I read your comments quite quickly, but … I believe I categorically and 100% disagree in the strongest terms. :-) … can I get back to you tomorrow morning though, please? Hopefully on the train at about 8 / 9 am.
Why did you drunk tweet me? Are you for real? 
I'm not sure. I think this is like saying playing an instrument with ear plugs in / gloves on / crossing your hands over / is useful training. It might be a fun challenge, and perhaps, yes, educational. But I don't think it is in an especially deep sense.
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