That's a reasonable answer, and yes, it makes sense.
You could say analysis is a theoretical form of programming, or correspondingly, that programming is an applied form of analysis -- specifically, applied on computers.
I guess my main reservation is that if kids' first exposure to analysis is through programming, there's a risk of skewing their perception towards looking for solutions that use computers. ("When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.")
In my experience, I've seen problems that have been approached like: We're doing X too slowly, and it's costing us; what kind of computerized tool can we build to let us do X more quickly? And after the tool has been built, it introduces a new set of processes with its own set of burdens, and X is not really done significantly more quickly. My conclusion is that you often need to step back and re-examine what people are actually doing (and why), and what they actually want to accomplish (and why.)
(And a significant obstacle with that is that people develop habits, and they get comfortable with them, and don't want to change them -- so, without knowing the details of the problem, the first step in "How can I speed up harvesting?" would probably be to have some willingness and flexibility to try out variations in your methods of harvesting.)
If we can find ways of teaching kids to program that build their problem-solving skills while also not clouding their heads with the idea that computers are necessarily part of the best solution, I'm all for it.
You could say analysis is a theoretical form of programming, or correspondingly, that programming is an applied form of analysis -- specifically, applied on computers.
I guess my main reservation is that if kids' first exposure to analysis is through programming, there's a risk of skewing their perception towards looking for solutions that use computers. ("When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.")
In my experience, I've seen problems that have been approached like: We're doing X too slowly, and it's costing us; what kind of computerized tool can we build to let us do X more quickly? And after the tool has been built, it introduces a new set of processes with its own set of burdens, and X is not really done significantly more quickly. My conclusion is that you often need to step back and re-examine what people are actually doing (and why), and what they actually want to accomplish (and why.)
(And a significant obstacle with that is that people develop habits, and they get comfortable with them, and don't want to change them -- so, without knowing the details of the problem, the first step in "How can I speed up harvesting?" would probably be to have some willingness and flexibility to try out variations in your methods of harvesting.)
If we can find ways of teaching kids to program that build their problem-solving skills while also not clouding their heads with the idea that computers are necessarily part of the best solution, I'm all for it.