Does Programming Make You Smarter?
 

I've started to notice a significant relationship with programming towards the progression of learning and even right down to basic lifestyle.

Ever since I've gotten really in to Programming, I always find myself ever thinking stuff through. It's almost like a curse, but as a result everything I think through usually has no rough edges. And when I'm not thinking random stuff through, I'm using that concentration on my work, almost as if programming has trained my work ethics.

Then if I look back when I did my CCAT test (the test to get you in to the gifted program), I had just started programming. I got %82.3 or something. A year later after I had been spending a lot of time programming, I got %99.9 on the very same test.

Now I find math ridiculously easy. Mostly on all logical problem solving questions, and linear equations. It's just so much like programming, matching situations to a system. I've been scoring perfects on tests without even doing my homework and knowing the content ... quite curious actually. And all the new content we are learning this year just seems so obvious!!

Programming has also seemed to have really opened my mind, I'll listen much more to what's going on around me without trying or even wanting to. I hate my Civics class, but for some reason I can't tune it out! I haven't been doing any of my homework, but I still know all the material because I have the curse of automatically absorbing what I'm hearing. Sort of like a baby and its "sponge-like brain". A baby doesn't necessarily try to learn, but will end up doing so anyways (very productively too). Although this might not be directly associated to the programming I've been doing, I still believe it has a connection.

It's wierd how everything is changing for me, and seeming to become much easier, much more fun. During the same time I've been programming around 4-10 hours a day, I don't think it's a coincidence.

The girls seem to like me more too, but that's a whole different story. Hahaha. :p

Any similar tales?

I'd say it teaches you how to think in a functional/structured way, I notice that I can organize my thoughts better, also the long nights of coding in college stopped me from doing drugs and drinking...:) So it kept me smarter..:)
girls liking you more has nothing to do with coding..:) unless you don't shower, don't cut your hair and don't wash your clothes...I know enough of those people, and they gotta stop complaining, I've never had a problem in that area, maybe cuz i don't come accross as your average n3rd0

For me, it's the other way around. I find myself coding pretty sexy stuff because of my aptitude in mathematics, etc. But hey, whatever works for ya mate. ;)

Just wait till the alien controlling you jumps out through your ribcage... :p

I'm roughly in the same boat as Ooble. I had advanced geometry down in 6th grade, but that's somewhat of another story. Programming has increased my logical abilities, though.

Well it's the same for me. The only reason I got in to programming was because I was encouraged by my advanced math. But that sort of had a bounce effect on it, and now everything seems to be working from my constant need to work/program. =S

When i was younger people always pressured me to go into math competitions because i understood advanced math very early, in 6th grade i was doing what i'm doing now in my senior year of high school. I kid you not. But i think in the end it was my curiosity that led me to start to program.

Theres no reason why programming wouldn't make you smarter, it requires thinking and using your brain

Not necessarily. It depends what's meant by "smarter". More capable of expanding potential, containing more expellable knowledge, understanding of vast concepts? Intelligence is a very ambiguous attribute actually. :confused:

However, each of those things is roughly as useful as the other, making any improvement in the catchall 'intelligence' a step in the right direction.