At What Age is it Easier to Learn?

Maria D asks: "At what age do people learn faster? Suppose you want to learn to write code at a certain level. What age ranges will absorb the lessons the best? There is surprisingly little research on post-early-childhood development. A language won't be quite native if you start learning it after five or so, but what about adult differences? From informal observations in graduate schools, I've concluded that older people learn faster because of their experience in learning techniques, which seems so counterintuitive!"

Comments

Feh!

[Pig Hogger]

It's easier to learn when you are GENUINELY interested in something, down to the guts.

I'm past 40 and whenever it's about what interests me the most, I have no problem learning new stuff.

Re:I'm Hardly the Person to Ask on This...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

It's impossible to explain memory allocation to someone who doesn't yet possess the ability to understand basic math (it's hard to teach it to someone who DOES understand basic math!).

I used legos to teach memory allocation to 4th graders, and I'm pretty sure the same method would work with younger kids. Pretty easy to have a heap of legos, and "allocate" certain block sizes to different building projects, which is no different than basic memory allocation (including the importance of "releasing" ownership of a block so that somebody else can use it). I'm always amazed at the math majors who think that without higher math, higher math concepts can't be explained in concrete terms.