Even this advice is aside from the point and a bad way to influence a beginner. If you're talking to someone 'learning programming' you should talk to them and

Even this advice is aside from the point and a bad way to influence a beginner. If you're talking to someone 'learning programming' you should talk to them and figure out a project that they can work on that would benefit them, and is within their grasp. Yes, the tools are a side concern. But what is going to help them is automating a task they're interested in, or hooking some data sources together, or creating a programmatic animation. To teach someone english word by word and rule by rule fails. You want them to read something interesting, to watch the subtitles on a movie. It's the same with programming.