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This guy clearly hasn't taught at a coding bootcamp. While he means well, you absolutely MUST go through the basics - the key is not staying there for long beca

This guy clearly hasn't taught at a coding bootcamp. While he means well, you absolutely MUST go through the basics - the key is not staying there for long because, yes, it's boring. It's important to give context and ground your proposed problems in reality. Relatable content is the single most important part, so skip the "foo/bar" stuff and go for real-life examples. That's it! No need to write clickbait! If you believe people with no coding experience will magically figure it out, you'll have a bad time and your students will hate you.

neilobremski 7y ago
I have to agree. My wife is going through a bootcamp and I am stuck helping her with the fundamentals after the instructor tries to breeze past them. She's not a "figure it out later" kind of person and wants to know details upfront. Simply throwing a problem at her that she has no tools yet to solve creates a lot of frustration.
zer0faith 7y ago
I am self taught and yeah I figured it out.
jfarmer 7y ago
I co-founded Dev Bootcamp where I was responsible for training our teachers and designing our curriculum. I 1000% endorse the article. The author isn't suggesting students will "magically figure it out". He's helping them develop the muscles they need to articulate, build, and refine their own mental models. You can get students making CS-relevant predictions without them having ever seen a single line of code in their lives within the first hour. Students will enter the world of programming with an orientation that enables them to learn 10x faster, which is even more critical in the coding bootcamp context.
LegitGandalf 7y ago
Turns out people have different learning styles. I claim both of you are right! That learning style thing has horrible consequences for about 40% of students in the American one size fits all public education model.

neilobremski 7y ago

I have to agree. My wife is going through a bootcamp and I am stuck helping her with the fundamentals after the instructor tries to breeze past them. She's not a "figure it out later" kind of person and wants to know details upfront. Simply throwing a problem at her that she has no tools yet to solve creates a lot of frustration.

zer0faith 7y ago

I am self taught and yeah I figured it out.

jfarmer 7y ago

I co-founded Dev Bootcamp where I was responsible for training our teachers and designing our curriculum. I 1000% endorse the article. The author isn't suggesting students will "magically figure it out". He's helping them develop the muscles they need to articulate, build, and refine their own mental models. You can get students making CS-relevant predictions without them having ever seen a single line of code in their lives within the first hour. Students will enter the world of programming with an orientation that enables them to learn 10x faster, which is even more critical in the coding bootcamp context.

LegitGandalf 7y ago

Turns out people have different learning styles. I claim both of you are right! That learning style thing has horrible consequences for about 40% of students in the American one size fits all public education model.