Teaching how to code is broken • Hacker News Board

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#201

Post by __mharrison__ » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:46 AM UTC

lawl wrote: post #36

__mharrison__ wrote: post #19

(Disclosure: I do corporate training (Python and Data Science) for a living.) I generally don't teach coding to newbies, so a lot of the coding I teach is correcting poor mental models and teaching features (somewhat) unique (or different) in Python. My best Pandas courses have been when the client opts to use their data for the course (instead of my canned data). The students are already subject matter experts with…

I always thought the best way to learn programming is to find a program you want to create, and then figure out how to make that happen. This is still how i learn (most effectively) today. If i want to learn a new language or something, i write something that i always wanted to write in it anyways. That way it doesn't get boring. I think what you're describing might be similar in that canned-data is not interesting.

I have pretty strong opinions on the "best way" to learn as well. My posts discusses the pros/cons of do it yourself projects.

https://www.metasnake.com/blog/learn-python-2021.html

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#202

Post by jimz » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 6:58 AM UTC

Cupertino95014 wrote: post #135

lawl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought the best way to learn programming is to find a program you want to create, and then figure out how to make that happen. This is still how i learn (most effectively) today. If i want to learn a new language or something, i write something that i always wanted to write in it anyways. That way it doesn't get boring. I think what you're describing might be similar in that canned-data is not interesting.

This is true. You do have to watch for the "adult piano beginner" syndrome, though. I'll explain: many piano teachers won't take adult beginners, purely because they have unrealistic ideas of how good they're going to be. They want to play a Chopin Etude or the Goldberg Variations or a Brahms Intermezzo, and don't want to spend time struggling with Clementi. Well, sorry. You won't be that good for a long, long time,…

I find the comparison really odd as someone in the opposite position - I had formal classical piano training from 8 years old until I gave it up during college, and later learned how to code entirely through copying other people's code and Stackoverflow in my mid 20s. Piano to me feels much more like a sport, in that there's a very visceral, physical aspect to playing, and in turn a ton of effort goes into optimizing everything from where your fingers should be placed to how hard or soft one is striking a key. Practicing is effectively comparable to training for some sort of non-team sport much more than anything else. I don't have perfect pitch, but learning how to read music is a very small part of the whole experience, and I would think that as an adult someone learning piano will find the physical aspect, particularly the finer motor elements, to be the primary hinderance to being really great. Writing code is entirely different in that it feels much more like learning a subject matter, and there's neither something akin to the apotheosis of the particular thing you're working on that you aim to emulate, nor hard boundaries as to determine your proficiency through performance. It's cool if your code doesn't work when you test it, you can fix that. It just feels like apples and oranges in the experience.

If you're picking up basketball at age 30, I hope you know that you're never going to be anywhere nearly as good as Curry, or Lebron. But you can definitely pick up a subject matter and become an expert later in life. Heinrich Schliemann essentially began his archeological career at age 36 and yes, basically excavated Troy in the worst way possible, but managed to actually excavate Troy. That's the difference between an adult piano learner and an adult code learner, I think.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#203

Post by nitwit005 » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 7:07 AM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #77

My approach is to employ folks with enthusiasm. If they're teachable, they'll figure out whatever pile of tools they get thrown into on the first task. Then they'll have some skills and the next task will seem less daunting. Of course some mentoring is useful. But just the stuff that's pertinent to the task at hand; concrete help that gets them moving forward. Because, somebody is paying for results. And because prod…

Enthusiasm is perhaps the easiest thing to fake in an interview, and something many of us fake automatically, as smiling and seeming engaged is something a lot of us learn to do when meeting new people.

I doubt it correlates with productivity outside of something like a sales role. Most of the world's work seems to get done by people who don't appear particularly enthused.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#204

Post by robertlagrant » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 7:25 AM UTC

Hermitian909 wrote: post #118

bob1029 wrote: post #17

I have always struggled with how to advise my friends & family on this path of learning. It seems like everyone wants to be a WFH developer these days, but I don't know how to enable them to succeed on that path. "Go build something you want to build!" is something I keep reiterating (as does this article). But most don't seem to be interested in that for whatever reason (presumably because its fucking hard). Maybe I…

I feel like I have a reasonably good track record of helping people get into tech (and was myself helped) and I'd note two things I've found very helpful: 1. It is very useful to let people know that the first ~500 hours of programming are the worst (not unusual for hard skills). I've seen now successful developers reduced to scream crying by the feelings lack of agency and overwhelming complexity during this period.…

> reduced to scream crying

Wow, I have never seen this.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#205

Post by kuboble » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 7:35 AM UTC

travisd wrote: post #5

I have opinions™, but mostly agree with this article. Most intro coding classes and course materials read more like a glossary than a lesson. This contributes (rather directly) to the failure to retain a diverse student base in intro CS program. We've gotten a lot better at recruiting CS students from underrepresented groups (women and BIPOC chiefly), but numbers drop off quickly[1]. Studies in math education have sh…

> This is especially important in CS especially when boys are encouraged from a young age to do "techy" and "geeky" things in ways that girls usually aren't.

It's not my experience. When I was a kid CS/IT didn't exist where I lived.

I was a math geek who loved to occupy himself with solving problems which are useless in real life and I was actively discouraged from it by parents, teachers and even bullied by peers. I still liked it but I tried not to speak about with anyone except some closest friends who accepted my weirdness. From my perspective it seemed that compared to boys the girls need more acceptance are less likely to pursue something they like if they are actively discouraged from it.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#206

Post by FranzFerdiNaN » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 7:59 AM UTC

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #51

bob1029 wrote: post #17

I have always struggled with how to advise my friends & family on this path of learning. It seems like everyone wants to be a WFH developer these days, but I don't know how to enable them to succeed on that path. "Go build something you want to build!" is something I keep reiterating (as does this article). But most don't seem to be interested in that for whatever reason (presumably because its fucking hard). Maybe I…

I have never met a programmer I respected skill-wise that wouldn't randomly spend a weekend locked in a room solving an esoteric problem they felt they had to solve (for no reason). Over the Christmas holidays everyone at my company writes PoCs or hobby projects, being glad to have some free time away from paid programming in order to enjoy recreational programming. What I'm trying to get at is software engineering i…

This “you gotta program all day every day or else you are unfit for it”-attitude is incredibly toxic and harmful. No other profession has this. No dentist gets told he gotta setup a practice in his garden shed to practice pulling teeth, or else hell be a horrible dentist. No, doing job for 40 hours a week is enough to be one.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#207

Post by TuringTest » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:06 AM UTC

asleepawake wrote: post #42

__mharrison__ wrote: post #19

(Disclosure: I do corporate training (Python and Data Science) for a living.) I generally don't teach coding to newbies, so a lot of the coding I teach is correcting poor mental models and teaching features (somewhat) unique (or different) in Python. My best Pandas courses have been when the client opts to use their data for the course (instead of my canned data). The students are already subject matter experts with…

Having a good mental model of a language seems like one of the fastest ways to be more productive in that language. Do you have any recommended resources for developing a strong mental model of python? For reference, Dan Abramov’s course JustJavascript [1] provides an amazing mental model of JavaScript, and Josh Comeau’s css for js developers [2] course provides an amazing model for understanding css. I have 5+ years…

> Having a good mental model of a language seems like one of the fastest ways to be more productive in that language.

True, but teaching s programming language is different than teaching programming.

Diving into a new language is something you do if you already understand how computers work and how to turn requirements into code. But to first acquire that understanding as a beginner, it's not enough to be introduced to the specifics of any particular language, which is what the article is talking about; you need to clarify what is the role of a programmer in understanding a problem and finding ways to model it as a group of data structures and functions that live in the computer.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#208

Post by oriolid » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:13 AM UTC

jimz wrote: post #202

Cupertino95014 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. You do have to watch for the "adult piano beginner" syndrome, though. I'll explain: many piano teachers won't take adult beginners, purely because they have unrealistic ideas of how good they're going to be. They want to play a Chopin Etude or the Goldberg Variations or a Brahms Intermezzo, and don't want to spend time struggling with Clementi. Well, sorry. You won't be that good for a long, long time,…

I find the comparison really odd as someone in the opposite position - I had formal classical piano training from 8 years old until I gave it up during college, and later learned how to code entirely through copying other people's code and Stackoverflow in my mid 20s. Piano to me feels much more like a sport, in that there's a very visceral, physical aspect to playing, and in turn a ton of effort goes into optimizing…

Have you tried formal computer science training? Learning programming through copying from StackOverflow sounds to me like about as good idea as learning piano by watching Synthesia videos on Youtube.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#209

Post by plondon514 » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:56 AM UTC

> Teaching how to code should be about problem-solving and effectively using the tools of a programming language to solve it.

This is one of the reasons I created https://codeamigo.dev. You can create step-by-step tutorials in multiple programming languages and view the output of your code directly in the browser. It's very similar to Codecademy, except anyone can _create_ a lesson. The idea is that we have a ton of knowledge in our community, but there is no great platform for sharing it with others.

If you're interested, give it a shot, it's completely free.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#210

Post by kodemager » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 9:00 AM UTC

I’m an external examiner for CS students and around 90% of the subjects we test them in is stuff they’ll never use in the real world.

It’s obviously anecdotal but in several decades or real world work I’ve never heard the words composition and aggregation used, and I’ve frankly never seen them really implemented intentionally in code either.

I sort of feel the same way with things like linked lists, double linked lists, trees and so on, though I see the value in those, but not enough for them to take up half a year of learning along with various sorting algorithms.

I have no idea to balance the “useful to know” with too much theory though, but I do know that almost everyone who graduates is around a years worth of real world coding away from being a programmer.