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.
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No, I don't think that. Having read it all now, it sounds like Matlab is just not very good. But the analogies you draw on (training wheels, manual gears) make me want to critique your suggestion that the fault with Matlab is it is graphical and not how real programming is.
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Most "real programming" isn't highly graphical and explorative, but (as I said at tedious length), that is not a good thing. "Real programming" isn't showing the right approach here. It's just how we happen to do things due to a historical process.
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There are notable exceptions from decades back (lisp machines, visual smalltalk) but they've generally failed in the market place as at the time they needed comparatively expensive machines. And I don't think they're perfect either, but they had amazing ideas in them.
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So, fundamentally, I disagree that we should all learn to program using basic text tools, not IDE. It's certainly how things are mostly done (so it's helpful preparation for most programming environments that exist), but I argue, we'd all be better off if that wasn't the case.
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I honestly think our established software engineering approach is causing enormous damage to human progress and I'm fairly obsessed by it :-/ And thank you for an insight in to Matlab – it sounds like it's got issues!
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"If you are a proficient coder and love Matlab, then this blog post is not really for you. Importantly, my intended audience are those who wish to see an improvement in the teaching of programming within psychology."
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Also "IDEs are extremely useful if you are a proficient coder already. However, they can act more like bad training wheels on a bicycle, hindering deeper learning."
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"can" means probabilistically and in certain settings
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