{"id":657,"date":"2006-02-26T21:39:25","date_gmt":"2006-02-27T01:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blogtest\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-tha"},"modified":"2006-02-26T21:39:25","modified_gmt":"2006-02-27T01:39:25","slug":"why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a12936'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><P>Recently, I&#8217;ve done three kinds of teaching:<\/P><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI>how to fly airplanes on instruments and helicopters VFR<br \/>\n<LI>third grade mathematics (to 11th graders at the local high school)<br \/>\n<LI>software engineering for Internet applications<\/LI><\/UL><br \/>\n<P>I&#8217;ve got an S.B. in math from MIT and I&#8217;ve built dozens of RDBMS-based Internet applications, so my comparative advantage is largest in teaching math and teaching software engineering.&nbsp; Yet I enjoy flight instruction the most, even though I can give any of my students a list of 10 better flight instructors.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Why?<\/P><br \/>\n<P>I figured it out today.&nbsp; The students at the local high school aren&#8217;t interested in math.&nbsp; They don&#8217;t care that an equation corresponds to a set of points in the x-y plane; they just want to graduate and\/or pass some sort of test.&nbsp; Most computer programmers, including a fair number of my students, aren&#8217;t that interested in a code review from an expert.&nbsp; They are satisfied with mediocrity, a warm cubicle, and a steady salary.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Pilots, on the other hand, want to be better.&nbsp; They understand that being better means staying alive, they recognize that they could do better, and they are eager for feedback and suggestions.&nbsp; So even if I&#8217;m not a great flight instructor, the students&#8217; desire to learn makes it a great experience.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>I can understand why high school students don&#8217;t care.&nbsp; Having looked at the curriculum, it is hard to imagine why they would care given that the unionized civil servants (teachers) don&#8217;t bother to motivate the material in any way.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Why doesn&#8217;t the average CS major or software engineer care, though?&nbsp; Confronted with an expert such as Jin S. Choi, author of <A href=\"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/ancient-history\/webmail\/\">http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/ancient-history\/webmail\/<\/A>&nbsp;(a one-month part-time project), you&#8217;d think they&#8217;d say &#8220;I will work day and night until I am as good as that guy.&#8221;&nbsp; But they seem to think that they can get by on 1\/10th of Jin&#8217;s capability, which has historically been true though with offshoring might not be anymore, and they are more resentful than grateful if you try to push them in Jin&#8217;s direction.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I&#8217;ve done three kinds of teaching: how to fly airplanes on instruments and helicopters VFR third grade mathematics (to 11th graders at the local high school) software [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fromtheoldserver"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Recently, I&#8217;ve done three kinds of teaching: how to fly airplanes on instruments and helicopters VFR third grade mathematics (to 11th graders at the local high school) software [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-02-27T01:39:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"philg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"philg\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"philg\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\"},\"headline\":\"Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering\",\"datePublished\":\"2006-02-27T01:39:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/\"},\"wordCount\":364,\"commentCount\":18,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\"},\"articleSection\":[\"From the Old Server\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/\",\"name\":\"Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2006-02-27T01:39:25+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\",\"description\":\"A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months...\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":[\"Person\",\"Organization\"],\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\",\"name\":\"philg\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg\",\"width\":2047,\"height\":2560,\"caption\":\"philg\"},\"logo\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/author\/philg\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog","og_description":"Recently, I&#8217;ve done three kinds of teaching: how to fly airplanes on instruments and helicopters VFR third grade mathematics (to 11th graders at the local high school) software [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/","og_site_name":"Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog","article_published_time":"2006-02-27T01:39:25+00:00","author":"philg","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"philg","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/"},"author":{"name":"philg","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e"},"headline":"Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering","datePublished":"2006-02-27T01:39:25+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/"},"wordCount":364,"commentCount":18,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e"},"articleSection":["From the Old Server"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/","url":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/","name":"Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-02-27T01:39:25+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/26\/why-i-love-teaching-flying-more-than-software-engineering\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/","name":"Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog","description":"A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months...","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e","name":"philg","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg","url":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg","width":2047,"height":2560,"caption":"philg"},"logo":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg"},"url":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/author\/philg\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paokyZ-aB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}