3 ms·

What you're looking for isn't "how to code", it's "how to architect". I'm unaware of any courses that go over the general structure of an entire solution, but

by prawks 12y ago

What you're looking for isn't "how to code", it's "how to architect". I'm unaware of any courses that go over the general structure of an entire solution, but that's the direction you want to take. I agree, it would be infinitely useful to have a lesson on: "Okay this is where programming Python fits into the architecture of a website. Now that you're oriented in the world, let's learn how to program in Python."

ryanbrunner 12y ago
I think a lot of the in-person classes do cover the entire ecosystem of the web, and how whatever the course is teaching fits into that. I teach an Intro to Rails course with HackerYou in Toronto, and we certainly cover the web in general, how requests work and are interpreted by a browser, how to use a text editor, programming concepts in general, git, etc. I don't really think we're particularly unique in that regard, either. I won't say we're absolutely comprehensive on all of these topics, but if the bar for "making a Rails site work" is that you've read SICP, configured your own Unix server, and can implement something in raw HTTP, we're essentially giving up on the notion of programming as something novices can do at all.
- prawks 12y ago
  > I won't say we're absolutely comprehensive on all of these topics, but if the bar for I think you're right not be comprehensive, trying to dig deep would be ridiculous. I think the parent is specifically looking to address the problem of teaching an abstract concept (programming, often through algorithms, data structures, object orientation, all extremely abstract things), which can be aided by some orientation of where the topics in the class reside in the larger concrete, applied space. I remember when I was sitting in my first object-oriented programming class trying to figure out what all of the "objects" and "instances" were that the instructor was talking about. I didn't have the mental model to associate the groupings of code snippets on my page to "things" that could be manipulated and could "communicate" with each other. Once I was able to build that model, I was able to grok the concept of object composition, etc. Years later after designing a few systems, I am able to construct large mental models and know where what I'm looking at at a given time (whether that be a database, business logic snippet, or HTML elements) lives in relation to the rest of the system. It's far from essential to learning "how to program procedural code", but it's essential in building entire things, or even pieces that touch other parts of a whole.

by prawks 12y ago

ryanbrunner 12y ago

I think a lot of the in-person classes do cover the entire ecosystem of the web, and how whatever the course is teaching fits into that. I teach an Intro to Rails course with HackerYou in Toronto, and we certainly cover the web in general, how requests work and are interpreted by a browser, how to use a text editor, programming concepts in general, git, etc. I don't really think we're particularly unique in that regard, either. I won't say we're absolutely comprehensive on all of these topics, but if the bar for "making a Rails site work" is that you've read SICP, configured your own Unix server, and can implement something in raw HTTP, we're essentially giving up on the notion of programming as something novices can do at all.

prawks 12y ago
> I won't say we're absolutely comprehensive on all of these topics, but if the bar for I think you're right not be comprehensive, trying to dig deep would be ridiculous. I think the parent is specifically looking to address the problem of teaching an abstract concept (programming, often through algorithms, data structures, object orientation, all extremely abstract things), which can be aided by some orientation of where the topics in the class reside in the larger concrete, applied space. I remember when I was sitting in my first object-oriented programming class trying to figure out what all of the "objects" and "instances" were that the instructor was talking about. I didn't have the mental model to associate the groupings of code snippets on my page to "things" that could be manipulated and could "communicate" with each other. Once I was able to build that model, I was able to grok the concept of object composition, etc. Years later after designing a few systems, I am able to construct large mental models and know where what I'm looking at at a given time (whether that be a database, business logic snippet, or HTML elements) lives in relation to the rest of the system. It's far from essential to learning "how to program procedural code", but it's essential in building entire things, or even pieces that touch other parts of a whole.