I disagree with your point about the monitor. Of utmost importance in learning and usability is the concept of "visibility", that is, the ability to see at all

I disagree with your point about the monitor. Of utmost importance in learning and usability is the concept of "visibility", that is, the ability to see at all times the state of a system. An experienced programmer can cope with less visibility since a lot of that system state is in their head. For a novice, with no experience to draw on, they are essentially working blind, having no idea what their changes are likely to do until they see the results. At the very least you need to have both the editor and the browser open. Switching between these two to see changes is more friction than necessary. The additional windows are: 1. to see the lesson 2. to see the website she is copying off 3. I forget. but it doesn't matter anyway. The task of switching between all these windows is enough to shatter the mental context of the real task, which is building the website, making a particular modification. That's the other thing- the workflow aspects haven't necessarily been offloaded into the novice's unconscious mind yet. Switching between a window needs conscious attention that breaks the coding context, and the coding context must be reestablished again and again, on every change. None of these realities go away because of your opinions about how a "real" programmer should be working.