emanation of psyche

different levels of reasoning in programming (almost certainly present in other domains too) THREAD

1. pre-reasoning, flailing, magical thinking, cargo-cult programming no mental model of how things work or what steps are relevant. no ability to detect correct outcomes.

2. process oriented reasoning "If I can complete each step in the how-to guide I have successfully completed the task." mental model is of conformity to established procedures. limited ability to detect correct outcomes besides confirming that procedure completed without error.

3. outcome oriented reasoning "does it work? ok good, we're done then." mental model is functional but not systematic. can detect correct outcomes within narrow constraints of correct. cannot improvise or generalize to better states of correctness.