I wasn't discounting your suggestions -- don't get me wrong. They're absolutely great for somebody wanting to do a deep dive. They're not a fast introduction to

I wasn't discounting your suggestions -- don't get me wrong. They're absolutely great for somebody wanting to do a deep dive. They're not a fast introduction to writing your first program, though. The logic required to understand high-level programming can be taught without diving that deeply. If somebody needed to write some simple math functions (and theoretically for whatever crazy reason wanted to write the programs in C), they would be able to learn to do so without such a deep dive into first principles. For real understanding, the courses are an incredible resource, especially for free!