Ask HN: What would you teach adults new to programming in a 2 hour class?

Perfect - I currently teach this to my sales agents and customer support team ( I am founder at a startup). They come from varied backgrounds and had zero knowledge of programming. Most of them actually wanted to know some very very basic things like : - What is a computer - What is a program - How does internet work

What I taught them in the first two hours: - What is a computer made of (Hardware, logic gates, cpu etc) - What is a program and how it runs on a server (How does a simple program look like and how does it go from high level code to being run on a computer) - How is the internet set up and how does the browser use it to find stuff - What is a browser - History of the internet - What is the difference between Front end, middle tier and database - Database basics like how is data actually stored physically - Write a simple python program

.... and now I go into actually building a website end to end with basic Html, css, JavaScript, some backend language, database. But thats more than 2 hours.

I never said adults stop learning. It would be terrible if we did.

But spoken language, absolutely true. For example, my wife speaks three languages fluently. But she dreams in Bulgarian, because that's what she is. I've been programming since I was six. Now, almost 50, I see virtually everything as a process (which is not a good thing, just as my wife). I strongly suspect that I think as I do because of what I've been doing every day for over forty years.

I didn't mean to offend. Clearly adults can learn and many can reach professional level with strong dedication. You are obviously one of them. But I still suspect that the children the OP teaches will get far more out of the lessons than the parents if they are taught in the same manner. Ask yourself if you ever think, count, dream etc in Arabic?

I would expose the potential risk of automation in a near future. Making them aware of learning something that might disapear in 10 years, for the most part.

Get their hands on something usable and relevant as fast as possible. I like using very precise and specific instructions for creating a twitter "every word" dictionary bot for instance. Simply exposing people to the idea that there is a whole world they can interact with with code (via an API) is a very powerful concept to get people interested in coding. It makes them go "aha!" when they think of all the apps and technology that use in their every day life and wonder how things work.

I absolutely agree - it has to be something in the browser, because it has to be familiar and visual. No theory. Open the source, show people how simle html 1.0 elements work. Bold, italics, paragraphs, some simple styles. Then people would be able to see the link between the code and how it translates to what is displayed. I am not sure if 2 hours are enough to introduce javascript, but that is definitely the way to go next - you put a little script, like: calculate something easy, and diplay the results. But it shouldn't be about math, it should be about colours, shapes etc.

The third step would be about making them understand the difference between client and server side programming and between programs in the browser and standalone programs. But that's only if they get the first part.

I would also stress, from the very beginning, that it's really simple, that there is no magic or super-powers involved. Open a popular news website, open the source and change the articles on the New York Times website. You want to achive the "aha!" effect within the first 2 minutes, so that they are encouraged and positive about the idea. It's a small lie, but an important one.