A 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 f

A 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.