11–14 of 14 posts
Trying to teach programming through narrative storytelling seems counterproductive.
I teach computer programming to beginners for a living, and I love the idea of a prose-like book aimed to be accessible to them. However, it's much, much harder than it sounds. You do an excellent job of addressing the programming concepts themselves in the text, but there's a lot more to it than that. First, and foremost, I'm not sure who your target reader is. Judging by the jargon you use, I'm not sure he exists.…
Whole-heartedly concur. Another issue that my programming students (university sophomores/juniors in a business school) often have trouble with is the concept of = being used for assignment rather than equality testing. It's as natural as breathing for programmers, but a weird shift from the type of math they're used to.
And then weak typing vs. strong typing vs. what the student expects, but at least that's easy to head off at the pass if you're anticpating it.