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> These problems are more typo/syntax-based rather than logic-based. This! I was hoping for a list of logic and organization / structure errors. On the idea

> These problems are more typo/syntax-based rather than logic-based. This! I was hoping for a list of logic and organization / structure errors. On the idea of editor feedback, one thing I find frustrating is that hardly anyone teaches how to read error messages and stack traces. That’s the most important thing because as a beginner you make tons of errors and you see them a lot! Books and tutorials don’t show any errors, so when you inevitably make one it’s hard to figure out what exactly you did wrong.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
This is novice programmers. They aren't writing big enough programs for organization/structure errors to matter much. They could have logic errors, but this kind of stuff is the fluff you have to get out of the way before you can start showing them the logic errors. There's kind of a sequence: - You didn't say what you meant (this kind of error) - You said what you meant, but you meant the wrong thing (logic errors) - You said the right thing, but in the wrong place (organization/structure). With a novice, you might need to work through them in approximately that order.
- wirthjason 5y ago
  I’m not sure what “novice” means. I certainly know when I was beginning I glossed over stack traces because they were a giant information dump and I didn’t know how to read them. They tell you exactly what’s happened, the call, what line it broke, what the local variables are, how it got there, etc. But it’s like reading a foreign language and is intimidating for a beginner. IDEs help a lot but once you know how to read a stack trace it’s easy to understand if you made a typo: AttributeError: Person object type has no attribute “helo” …or have a bug: AttributeError: None type has no attribute “hello”
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    > I’m not sure what “novice” means. It took me 15 years to convince myself I was no longer a novice. I've been at it for 40 years now, and I still don't think I'm anything like a master of the craft, nor ever will be.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

This is novice programmers. They aren't writing big enough programs for organization/structure errors to matter much. They could have logic errors, but this kind of stuff is the fluff you have to get out of the way before you can start showing them the logic errors. There's kind of a sequence: - You didn't say what you meant (this kind of error) - You said what you meant, but you meant the wrong thing (logic errors) - You said the right thing, but in the wrong place (organization/structure). With a novice, you might need to work through them in approximately that order.

wirthjason 5y ago
I’m not sure what “novice” means. I certainly know when I was beginning I glossed over stack traces because they were a giant information dump and I didn’t know how to read them. They tell you exactly what’s happened, the call, what line it broke, what the local variables are, how it got there, etc. But it’s like reading a foreign language and is intimidating for a beginner. IDEs help a lot but once you know how to read a stack trace it’s easy to understand if you made a typo: AttributeError: Person object type has no attribute “helo” …or have a bug: AttributeError: None type has no attribute “hello”
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > I’m not sure what “novice” means. It took me 15 years to convince myself I was no longer a novice. I've been at it for 40 years now, and I still don't think I'm anything like a master of the craft, nor ever will be.