4 ms·
Kudos to the author but I got the impression that they equate "learning to program" with "learning syntax" which, I think, is a mistake. I've noticed the articl
by kgeist 4y ago
Kudos to the author but I got the impression that they equate "learning to program" with "learning syntax" which, I think, is a mistake. I've noticed the article talks a lot about things like "print", "goto", dereferencing, enums, but nothing about algorithms, data structures, architecture, patterns, how to properly structure your code. That is, the author learned how to make small one-off utilities but there's no mention if they went beyond that. I program since childhood and I'd say I'm still learning how to program because there's so much more to it than just finishing a few crash courses and making your Rust program finally compile.
- Twisol 4y agoA big part of learning to program early is absolutely how to internalize the syntax you're seeing into a mental model of the program. I bounced off of Java on first encounter for no better reason than "wtf is public static void main supposed to mean, i want to understand not just cargo cult examples". Data structures and so on are what you build on top of that baseline understanding. They're important, sure, but getting over that first hump is hard. Once you have some familiarity -- some real roots set into a language -- you can start to learn how to build real(er) things in it. All the architecture in the world won't help somebody who can barely hold one function in their head.
- olah_1 4y ago> but nothing about algorithms, data structures, architecture, patterns, how to properly structure your code. To be fair, that is the fault of most programming textbooks and courses. Maybe ONE programming course (Learn Go With Test) I’ve seen has focused on this.
- ericmcer 4y agoAgree, you should be so proficient at coding that the actual coding part of programming is intuitive so you can focus on the much more difficult task of where/how/why that code is going to run.