Teaching Programming To A Highly Motivated Beginner

Post by brooklyntom » Sat, Nov 10, 2012, 2:40 AM UTC

VikingCoder wrote: post #16

jyu wrote: post #15

This may seem silly, but I found the most difficult part of learning RoR was getting my development environment set up. I tried several times since 2005 to get started, but failed due to a sticking point that for some reason I couldn't get past. It wasn't until a friend with a bunch of RoR experience walked me through the setup of the black box of different parts to run a web app that I actually got it. Comparatively…

Totally agree with your last point. To your first point, I really wish people would make virtual machine images with dev environments already set up on them.

They did just that in the coursera course "Software Engineering for Software as a Service". A VM is available for download and as a rank amateur I found it a great way to dive in. https://www.coursera.org/saas/

Post by gingerlime » Sat, Nov 10, 2012, 9:31 AM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #34

gingerlime wrote: post #32

Any advice for the slightly motivated beginner? My wife has recently asked me to teach her some programming. I doubt she will be that highly motivated though. I am guessing her interest is just to explore this world and perhaps better understand the work I'm doing. I have never taught any beginners but this could be a fun experience for both of us. I am wondering what kind of assignments, projects or scenarios to go…

Students pick up on the enthusiasm of their teachers; motivation can be catching. Assume she's highly motivated and work from there. In general, I don't think that people who are "slightly" motivated learn much in any area. A friend of mine who is highly motivated is having fantastic success with Zed's "Learn Python the Hard Way" ( http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ ). I can't say I'm teaching him, though, I'm just in…

Thanks for the tip. That's true, of course. She might become highly motivated, but at this point there's nothing burning to motivate her. She's not hoping to get a job as a developer, she's not particularly passionate about building a new app or a website. She's curious enough about it to try to explore. The same way she enjoys knitting occasionally. Does one have to be highly motivated to enjoy it?

Re: Teaching Programming To A Highly Motivated Beginner

Re: Teaching Programming To A Highly Motivated Beginner