It's not the usual or appropriate notion of learning by doing. It's more analogous to going through math drill exercises in a book, or following step by step i

It's not the usual or appropriate notion of learning by doing. It's more analogous to going through math drill exercises in a book, or following step by step instructions in a lab (doing without understanding). Research on those techniques shows that students learn less than in more higher-order activities (simulations, games, projects, etc., see e.g. Wenglinsky, 1998, Does It Compute?). I think better introductions to programming for complete novices would include things like visual programming environments (Scratch, Blockly), or editing/tweaking levels in a game, or making alterations to an existing simple game or animation, like the Processing.js ones on jsdo.it and other sites.