I spoke to you in Chapter 2, Are Developers Born or Made? – Debunking the Myth of Prodigies about the notion that prodigies and savants are a myth. But if this is the case, how can expert developers analyze programs so quickly? To answer this question, we need to go back to Fake Ancient Greece.
I said Fake Ancient Greece because my favorite illustration of mental models was discovered alongside one of the greatest forgeries in modern art history.
In Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, he tells the story of the Greek Kouros. In 1985, the Getty Museum purchased a Greek statue called the Kouros for over $9 million dollars. Initially, the museum was hesitant to purchase the statue because there was a significant fear that sculpture was a fake. Kouros pieces were so incredibly rare, the chances that a legitimate and well cared for piece had been discovered were slim to none.
They simply knew that something was not quite right. Their suspicions turned out to be correct and the Kouros ended up being proved to be a hoax. But how were these individuals able to do what countless scientific studies could not? It all comes down to mental models.
In preparation for this chapter, I was discussing the topic of mental models with a friend and was surprised when she looked at me, confused. After informing me that she'd never heard of mental models, I decided to add this section to explain what mental models are. And after that we'll get into how we can build them to learn development.