Ask HN: How to Teach Coding?

So these are the developers who already have basics of programming but they usually don't understand whole ecosystem around it. For example, many don't understand version control, server vs local env, etc. Normally, many senior developers get really frustrated when junior devs ask them about such basic concepts. I used to be like that too, however, I learned to be patient and tried my best to help them. And some of my teammates started to ask me if I can help their friends in other teams/companies.

So this is what I have learned about mentoring:

* Encouragement - Unfortunately, tech world if full of genius jerks. Many junior developers get discouraged by such behavior. A lot of time I find myself convincing them that they will catch up to senior devs eventually. Sometimes, I feel like I am teaching them how to manage their senior developers/managers instead of teaching them technical topics.

* Find out what their objectives are - Another big issue is that many developers have big egos and they would try to hide their ignorance by asking very specific question. If it's a senior developer, I would just answer the question. However, if it is a junior developer, I usually ask them what their end goal is and many times they are going down the wrong path.

* Let them ask you questions and then use search engines to find answer together, even if you know the answer.

* Code Reviews are great but you have to be sensitive towards junior developers. I usually make a small comment in CR and then meet with the developer to explain it further and to make sure they understand the reasoning completely. For example, many developers from non-English speaking countries have hard time understanding difference between verbs and nouns, and they name variables and methods which are hard to decipher. It is hard to explain that in CR but in-person much easier. Also English is not my native tongue so I also get criticised for my namings too still. So I can understand it can be hard to come up with a good variable name for non-native English speakers.

* Help them find good training material. You cannot spend hours training junior developers, so make a list of good resources to learn from and ask developers to review them. These cannot be 40 hour course, but something more narrowly focused on their current problem.

Coding should probably be taught with a background of requirements that are precisely given in terms of the abstractions that are being used in the code. So that is to say, the problem itself doesn't have to be something abstract (like a number-theoretic computation); it can be connected to something in the real world. But the representational mapping from that domain to the computer should be established by the teacher, so there is no irrelevant fumbling about the requirements.

In the case of the sandwich, we should provide a procedure which somehow takes the slices of bread out of the bag. Similarly, we provide all other necessary procedures, and only those procedures are to be used. Then we eliminate questions about the detailed requirements about what those procedures themselves do, like can the bag be ripped, or does the removal have to be tidy.

A good domain for teaching coding might be game playing (cards, etc). People understand that the objects used in games are abstract, and that certain details do not matter to the game, like the exact shape of a rook in chess or its precise placement within a square. It could just be the letter "R" in an 8x8 grid of characters (with "r" being the opposite color).

Symbolic games are basically a form of mathematics that is instantiated in the real world whose abstractions people readily understand. Moreover, they have a point (to have fun), so the "why are we doing this" question is settled.

Of course data structures are best taught in C on a desktop. Functional programming is certainly interesting but further apart from how a modern computer works.

During my studies I even did opcode programming on antic 8085 dev boards, with a 20 keys keyboard (hex digits, reset, run, memory up/down). You can't imagine how much fun that was, akin to woodworking or pottery. That certainly grounded a number of ideas on programming, that may look otherwise mystic to students.