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In some sense, proofs as presented in a textbook should not hold your hand. The point of learning about proofs is being able to create proofs yourself, even if

In some sense, proofs as presented in a textbook should not hold your hand. The point of learning about proofs is being able to create proofs yourself, even if they are trivial variations on proofs you have seen. Computer analogy: would it be a good idea if someone showing an implementation of a double-linked list explained every little detail about pointers and arrays etc.? However, there are many things we can do syntax-wise to facilitate the understanding of proofs. I remember we experimented with using indentation (on paper) in proofs when I did functional analysis, and that was quite useful for keeping track of "variable scope" etc.

Natsu 11y ago
While it's true that you won't survive long with a lot of 'cracks' in your foundation of understanding, I think there's quite a bit of worth in helping people identify and explore the holes in their own understanding and making this as painless as possible. I understand that we can't trod new ground if nobody is willing to put up with the difficult slogs, but there's no reason to make things difficult for the sake of difficulty. There are plenty of challenging exercises one can do simply by learning to apply a newfound understanding without having to leap from perch to perch because nobody would explain how to bridge a certain gap. I think that things are trending in this direction already, actually.