3 ms·

Deleting stuff, compiling often, and proper indentation -- things beginners don't think they should waste time on, but which actually would solve most of their

• ColonelPhantom 4y ago
  Especially as compiling often and proper indentation are often taken care of by running a linter and an autoformatter. I'll add "learning how to use a debugger", though.
  • kqr 4y ago
    In my interactions with beginners, adding more tools has never helped them learn faster. That goes for linters, autoformatters, debuggers, and version control. Manual formatting and printf debugging goes a long way, and takes only foundational understanding of the problem, not the manual for another tool. (Don't get me wrong: I love those tools. For a person who already knows them, they're a productivity multiplier. But a complete beginner usually doesn't have that knowledge.)
    • hoosieree 4y ago
      It's good to have a teacher who can recognize the moment when print-debugging is no longer sufficient and a real debugger will solve the problem immediately. Introducing debuggers too early leads to lots of "why do we need this? I can just print..." It's a catch-22 though, because ideally you'd learn the debugger in an intro course, but intro course problems can usually be debugged with simple print statements.