3 ms·

The syntax thing is definitely true, but opens up a different problem: people can now write code without understanding what it does. Throw some blocks together

The syntax thing is definitely true, but opens up a different problem: people can now write code without understanding what it does. Throw some blocks together and look, the cat is doing things. From my experience this is usually a problem where students are being forced into programming where they have no major interest, or where the teacher does not understand what's going on so can't help or assess the student properly. I would suggest that this is the situation in the majority of classrooms that have jumped on the 'code' bandwagon.

caf 10y ago
This is exactly how very young children initially learn many things, though. The first developmental stages of writing are often drawing lines of squiggles that ape lines of adult writing, moving on to random collections of letters.
- askvictor 10y ago
  True, but my experience is with much older kids (high school), where the problem is more that they have no interest in coding, so throw some blocks together and hope the teacher doesn't know what's going on either.
  - caf 10y ago
    The opportunities for high school kids to malinger and avoid learning things are many and manifest.
a3n 10y ago
> Throw some blocks together and look, the cat is doing things. I don't know much about psychology, but I suspect a kid below a certain age is much less interested in how a cat does something than with the cat actually doing it. If they're interested, they'll naturally reach the limit of their tools, and learn about the cat's internals. From an HN thread today on combinatorics: list(itertools.permutations('abc')) I don't want to have to know how that works merely to use it, and if knowing the implementation was required to use it, it would slow down my progress. If I was eight, it might slow down my interest. Taken back to an extreme, a baby on your lap would not be interested if your finger pointed to the word 'cat' on a line of text in a book and said "cat!". But they would be interested if you pointed to a picture of a cat. Whatever's appropriate for an age, and for an individual, is probably best.

caf 10y ago

This is exactly how very young children initially learn many things, though. The first developmental stages of writing are often drawing lines of squiggles that ape lines of adult writing, moving on to random collections of letters.

askvictor 10y ago
True, but my experience is with much older kids (high school), where the problem is more that they have no interest in coding, so throw some blocks together and hope the teacher doesn't know what's going on either.
- caf 10y ago
  The opportunities for high school kids to malinger and avoid learning things are many and manifest.

a3n 10y ago

> Throw some blocks together and look, the cat is doing things. I don't know much about psychology, but I suspect a kid below a certain age is much less interested in how a cat does something than with the cat actually doing it. If they're interested, they'll naturally reach the limit of their tools, and learn about the cat's internals. From an HN thread today on combinatorics: list(itertools.permutations('abc')) I don't want to have to know how that works merely to use it, and if knowing the implementation was required to use it, it would slow down my progress. If I was eight, it might slow down my interest. Taken back to an extreme, a baby on your lap would not be interested if your finger pointed to the word 'cat' on a line of text in a book and said "cat!". But they would be interested if you pointed to a picture of a cat. Whatever's appropriate for an age, and for an individual, is probably best.