When learning a new language, the syntax and exercises which explore this come to me fairly quickly. The difficulties are (a) learning the best way of structuri

When learning a new language, the syntax and exercises which explore this come to me fairly quickly. The difficulties are (a) learning the best way of structuring large blocks of code using the new syntax and tools, and (b) for new programmers: understanding how to convert conceptual rules in my head into algorithms. If you set out to only teach the language syntax and paradigms you are leaving a beginner with a lot of extra work before they can start or contribute to meaningful projects. This is the reason that people learn so much from reading other people's code in open-source projects: most writers skim over trying to teach the most fundamental skill of programming. I do believe it is possible to teach practicalities in addition to theory and if you attempt to do this, you will be doing a lot more than most writers have done in the past.