Ironically, I'm trying to solve this puzzle these days: making programming more beginner friendly.
One gimmick that I use to address "invalid syntax" issue is...
I show a text with numerous grammatical 3rrors in it. And peple still able 2 read it.
Then I show a working production code with 10k+ lines of code. Then I misspell one 'word' in it, and show how the entire thing breaks.
Then I show an excel sheet with 1000 numbers and show how fast excel can add all of them.
And when I ask humans to do the same. They begin to get the difference ;)
IMHO, the approach to teaching had been created by .. electrical engineers (not programmers) and is long overdue for a complete re-write.
I'm helping kids with their first and second course... what to they start with?
console applications
Now if you consider that an 18-20 had been born after consumer console applications were succeeded by GUI apps. And they had never seen or used a console application in their life...
Then what are we doing here?
Are we teaching someone how to drive .. using a car with a manual starter, manual transmission, carburetor and no power steering.
;)
In the end ... programming is simple. So there should be a way of teaching it so that the student goes "yeah it is simple"
Ironically, I'm trying to solve this puzzle these days: making programming more beginner friendly.
One gimmick that I use to address "invalid syntax" issue is...
I show a text with numerous grammatical 3rrors in it. And peple still able 2 read it.
Then I show a working production code with 10k+ lines of code. Then I misspell one 'word' in it, and show how the entire thing breaks.
Then I show an excel sheet with 1000 numbers and show how fast excel can add all of them.
And when I ask humans to do the same. They begin to get the difference ;)
IMHO, the approach to teaching had been created by .. electrical engineers (not programmers) and is long overdue for a complete re-write.
I'm helping kids with their first and second course... what to they start with?
Now if you consider that an 18-20 had been born after consumer console applications were succeeded by GUI apps. And they had never seen or used a console application in their life...
Then what are we doing here?
Are we teaching someone how to drive .. using a car with a manual starter, manual transmission, carburetor and no power steering.
;)
In the end ... programming is simple. So there should be a way of teaching it so that the student goes "yeah it is simple"
Sounds like my car. I like it and learned to drive with it.