Abstract
The prevailing image of the computer represents it as a logical
machine and computer programming as a technical, mathematical
activity. Both the popular and technical culture have constructed
computation as the ultimate embodiment of the abstract and formal.
Yet the computer’s intellectual personality has another side: our
research finds diversity in the practice of computing that is denied
by its social construction. When we looked closely at programmers
in action we saw formal and abstract approaches; but we also saw
highly successful programmers in relationships with their material
that are more reminiscent of a painter than a logician. They use
concrete and personal approaches to knowledge that are far from
the cultural stereotypes of formal mathematics.’
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