Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I will now send this to beginner programmers

headlinedev.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 76 posts

Re: I will now send this to beginner programmers

#21

Post by klodolph »

> Now, to be clear, nothing about this model is scientific, [...]

This one always gets me. I've been trying hard these days to give better, clearer, more actionable advice to beginners who want to learn how to program.

I think, at the most basic level, we understand that our estimation of how much we learn from some particular teacher/course/method is wildly inaccurate, and it's a poor way to assess how effective that teacher/course/method is. Someone constructing a cute pyramid diagram is not much better.

It's also not about maximizing retention. That's a very one-dimensional way of looking at effectiveness. All of these ways of learning have their own place.

We DO have decades of qualitative and quantitative research into computer science pedagogy. We CAN do better than draw up a pyramid like this. It's nice to acknowledge that the pyramid is not scientific, but why would we not then dig through the journals a little bit to find some papers on computer science pedagogy?

Re: I will now send this to beginner programmers

#22

Post by osullip »

na85 wrote: post #2

>Chat room helpers often will try and lead you to discover the right answer yourself. It may feel frustrating, but play their game and you will learn. This is the discussion level of the pyramid. I fucking hate this so much. You spend hours trawling through Google search results and finally decide the answer isn't out there. Stack overflow is caustic so you don't want to ask there. Hop on IRC and ask "how do I do X?"…

I am self taught at most things I know.

What I would have given for someone to explain objects to me when I was trying be an object oriented programmer.

>objects are the things you think about first in designing a program and they are also the units of code that are eventually derived from the process.

Huh? Classes would confuse me. Methods would confuse me. I could get things to work but not understand why or how to extend and abstract properly.

At some point of learning you just need to be told the answer so you can move on.

Re: I will now send this to beginner programmers

#25

Post by alexashka »

Who are these beginner devs? Do people actually get a bachelors degree and proceed to not work in the field?

Who are these people who take up a craft of creating software and need to be told to, create software, to get better at it?

Presumably, people who get into this, already want to create stuff. If they have some other motivation, I don't want anyone telling them the 'secret' :)

Re: I will now send this to beginner programmers

#26

Post by 082349872349872 »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #18

Projects are great but there's a deceptively challenging step in "formulate a small and feasible project idea". It's really hard to come up with a small and feasible project when you're a beginner. First, beginners don't know what's feasible. To a beginner all of programming is computer magic. There's not a lot of difference to a beginner between training a machine learning system for classifying different apples and…

Note that the flowchart given (with its explicit instructions for beginners to back off —hopefully exponentially— upon discovering one has bitten off more than one can chew) may be applicable even for non-beginner programmers:

Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve. — Alan Perlis.

Re: I will now send this to beginner programmers

#27

Post by intelVISA »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #18

Projects are great but there's a deceptively challenging step in "formulate a small and feasible project idea". It's really hard to come up with a small and feasible project when you're a beginner. First, beginners don't know what's feasible. To a beginner all of programming is computer magic. There's not a lot of difference to a beginner between training a machine learning system for classifying different apples and…

Agreed, a common misconception, imo, is that programming's some sort of math or language skill when really it's just learning how to break down computer magic into the simple underlying logic and systems that generate it.

Re: I will now send this to beginner programmers

#28

Post by Groxx »

na85 wrote: post #17
CGamesPlay wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. If you've actually done the research that leads the knowledge gatekeeper to ask these, these questions are easy for you to answer. If you haven't then you're wasting their time.

>Absolutely not. If you've actually done the research that leads the knowledge gatekeeper to ask these, these questions are easy for you to answer. Depending on the specifics of the question being asked, sure, I agree. But speaking only for myself, I abhor playing silly coy games of cat and mouse. I only come to chat rooms as a third/last resort exactly because so often you can't get a direct answer without satisfyin…

The people in the chatroom interact more with people who do not do this. They're trying to prevent wasting their own time, and leaving askers with precise answers to questions they didn't need answered, or sending them down the wrong path and fielding tons of opaque questions rather than finding out what's actually going on.

I get that you don't want to waste your time, that's entirely reasonable... but by asking for help you are asking others to donate their time. Refusing to acknowledge that their strategy helps them preserve their time just makes you the asshole, not them.

Re: I will now send this to beginner programmers

#29

Post by imperfect_blue »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #18

Projects are great but there's a deceptively challenging step in "formulate a small and feasible project idea". It's really hard to come up with a small and feasible project when you're a beginner. First, beginners don't know what's feasible. To a beginner all of programming is computer magic. There's not a lot of difference to a beginner between training a machine learning system for classifying different apples and…

Overscoping a beginner project is completely harmless. The worst thing that can happen is that you get stuck along the way and realize that a feature is much more difficult or out right impossible. You then cut that feature or give up on the project if you've sunk enough time into it.

Fortunately, actual delivery of a beginner project is pointless. The only point is to learn by doing and you accomplish that regardless of whether your project fails. And failing projects is a lesson in itself on scope, estimation, and research; you won't get this experience if someone else is scoping for you like in a school project .

Re: I will now send this to beginner programmers

#30

Post by cenny »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #18

Projects are great but there's a deceptively challenging step in "formulate a small and feasible project idea". It's really hard to come up with a small and feasible project when you're a beginner. First, beginners don't know what's feasible. To a beginner all of programming is computer magic. There's not a lot of difference to a beginner between training a machine learning system for classifying different apples and…

I found the book Exercises for Programmers (https://www.programmingbooks.dev/#exercises-for-programmers) to be invaluable to help learn new languages and frameworks. Beginners seem to appreciate it as well.

It’s just an ordered collection of exercises that starts easy and builds up to more challenging ones. I can’t overstate the power of this simple book.

Post reply on HN