One part of this I've been thinking about lately is the need and ability to break down large, abstract problems into small, solvable ones.

For example, there's this ticker you might have seen over the weekend. I didn't actually know how to build that sort of thing when one of my colleagues had the idea early last week.

But part of what I like about programming is figuring out all the discrete bits of functionality I'll need, and then writing each specific function and watching problems start to fall off. Something like that widget is mostly a collection of jQuery pluggins, plus some relatively simple math.

I used to do something similar on big stories: start with a list of known facts, then list everything unknown, then list sources who can fill in those gaps, then start reporting. It's that same habit: building systems to break big problems into small tasks.

Honestly, I'm skeptical.

I share your enthusiasm for the idea of "computational thinking," and I think that journalists (in their role as human beings) could benefit from developing computational thinking skills. But I don't see the substantial parallels to draw between programmers and journalists. In fact, to some extent I think there's a mismatch, in that most programmers want to start from clear and well-defined requirements, while journalists, to do a good job, need to boldly dive into an unclear situation and find the facts and develop a narrative.

Perhaps we should look for a parallel between journalists and "business analysts," but that's less glamorous. Some programmers play the BA role, but others really dislike it and want someone else to deal with the messy reality.

You write in your blog post "communication and collaboration between journalists and programmers needs to improve so we can build the necessary tools to do better journalism." I'd like to see that set of tools articulated. In fact, if journalists were much like BAs, that set of tools should be more clear already, so perhaps I don't even believe in that analogy!

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I feel like there are some layers yet to be peeled off of this onion.

I think the underlying assumption here, that "traditional" reporters have more to learn from journalist/programmers, is possibly backwards -- or at least deserving of more attention.

After all, great journalists have been doing the things you mention for decades. Phil Meyer wrote Precision Journalism about using social science techniques in reporting in 1973. In Newsthinking (first published in 1983), the best book on news writing I've ever read, Bob Baker wrote extensively about the mental organizations and processes great writers use to produce spectacular work on deadline. How is his excellent chapter on self-editing that different from teaching reporters to "refactor"?

Good narrative writers have the ability to control the reader through words. Those writers seamlessly bring in context, create tension, drop hints, line their stories with subtle mystery. They slow the reader down at will and speed back up effortlessly. Look at anything by Gene Weingarten, or David Finkel, or Walt Bogdanich. Every word -- every comma -- has a purpose.

So perhaps a better question is: What can we, as programmer/journalists, learn from them? How can we build news applications that bring in context as seamlessly as Weingarten does? How can we make playing with our products as indelible an experience as reading Finkel?

Granted, these are also not new questions; user-interface specialists have been tossing versions of them around for years. But as we define this very young craft, these are questions we need to ask. As we play with new forms of narrative, we shouldn't ignore the lessons we can learn from older forms.

Be interesting to hear a reporter or producer's take on journalistic thinking as applied to computer/web programming.

How about these parallels from http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html:

• Learn to write your native language well. Though it's a common stereotype that programmers can't write, a surprising number of hackers (including all the most accomplished ones I know of) are very able writers.
• Develop your appreciation of puns and wordplay.

Personally, puns are not permitted until after midnight, but there seems to be some correlation between wordplay and programming.

After all, the analogies on the verbal portion of the SAT exam are more strictly logic-based than the math questions.

(Full disclosure: I got a perfect score on the verbal portion of my SAT exam, and almost completely flubbed the math portion. This does not seem to hinder my ability to program in any way.)

This brief piece about "thinking like a statistician without the math" covers some topics that overlap with your post. I especially like that it's written in language anyone can relate to.

I like that your post is thoughtful, wide ranging, and clearly laid out. My critique is that it's not written for the subset of journalists who are storytellers at heart, and whose craft depends on the art of drawing out emotion and synthesizing experience in order to tell a larger truth.