A non-trivial part of the big difference between the juniors that seem talented and "get it", and those that don't is precisely their ability to form accurate enough world models quickly. You can tell who is going at the "physics" of software and applying them, and who is just writing down recipes, and doesn't try to understand the nature of any of the steps.
It's especially noticeable when teaching functional programming to people trained in OO: Some people's model just breaks, while others quickly see the similarities, and how one can translate from a world of vars to a world of monads with relative ease. The bones of how computation works aren't changing, just how one puts together the pieces.
It's especially noticeable when teaching functional programming to people trained in OO: Some people's model just breaks, while others quickly see the similarities, and how one can translate from a world of vars to a world of monads with relative ease. The bones of how computation works aren't changing, just how one puts together the pieces.