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This gets at something I was wondering. I grew up on books and love them, but that's when they were the best means for transmitting static information. Programm
by wpietri 5y ago
This gets at something I was wondering. I grew up on books and love them, but that's when they were the best means for transmitting static information. Programming strikes me as a dynamic skill. I wouldn't recommend anybody learn to ride a bike via a book, and I suspect that programming is similarly best learned mainly through doing.
Thinking back, even in the dark ages one of my gateways to programming was a programmable toy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak
- Mezzie 5y agoMy learning was all for play/toys. I just wanted to tell people about anime and make weird things like site counters that used letters instead of numbers or guest books so that people who couldn't code/afford the internet time for chat rooms could still talk about cool stuff. It turned out I had a knack for it and later I liked to help with things like emulation and make game mods or web stuff for fandom communities. I wouldn't have read a computer science book as a kid (and I was a VERY nerdy child who was a hyperlexic mental calculator). I agree that learning by doing is good, especially since when you run into a programming problem, you usually don't solve it by finding a book on the problem. So starting with projects also lets them practice problem-solving, which is a HUGE part of programming.