So, you’ve decided that you want to add a particular programming language to your repertoire. Now what?
In this article, I outline 12 suggestions for study techniques. Remember that everybody learns differently. Some of these techniques may work excellently for you, whereas others may not meet your needs at all. If you start to feel stuck with one strategy, try another and see where it gets you.
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You have to have someone who knows how to teach before they write their books. Just because someone writes an article doesn’t mean they can teach. They know something but teaching is more than giving people a bunch of facts. Teaching is presenting the information in a format that people can learn. It also means not assuming that the person who doesn’t know is communicated what the writer needs to communicate and often doesn’t about a language. Writers assume that the reader knows how to program and that isn’t always the case but they convey half of the teaching because it is assumed that they know what the writer isn’t communicating. In other words, writers write and give you commands to do something without telling you how to do something.
Some of the books out there are written by people who got their book written too quickly because they were trying to meet a deadline.
It takes a lifestyle to learn how to code: Turn the TV off.
I know adults who know microprocessors who can’t learn C because a lot of the books are too badly written.
And the reason why more people aren’t learning microprocessors is the example of why some authors can’t teach.
I learned BASIC at home by typing in one command every day on my Commodore 64. Then I learned it in High School and then College made me take BASIC programming and then PASCAL.
Basic was a language for people for people who couldn’t program and in my college days, everyone wouldn’t leave me alone in LAB class because they wanted me to write their programs for them.
“Despite the enormous changes which have taken place since electronic computing was invented in the 1950s, some things remain stubbornly the same. In particular, most people can’t learn to program: between 30% and 60% of every university computer science department’s intake fail the first programming course. Experienced teachers are weary but never oblivious of this fact; brighteyed beginners who believe that the old ones must have been doing it wrong learn the truth from bitter experience; and so it has been for almost two generations, ever since the subject began in the 1960s.”
If two percent of students study computer programming, maybe it is because that two percent believe they can. And if they don’t believe they can learn, they won’t because they either don’t know what it takes to learn or it is predictive prophecy: They don’t think they can so they won’t try so they don’t.
If we studied the other 98% of Americans who don’t code, we might get a more representative sample of who can and who can’t. I’ve already talked to teachers in Philadelphia who say they can’t get their kids to do their homework.
When I went to elementary school, only those in the gifted program or a full A average were allowed to touch the Commodore Pet computers in school. The teachers attitudes back in the beginning of computers was most kids wouldn’t be able to do anything with it and that attitude still existed among some teachers that I knew back when Apple I and II’s were in school. If you didn’t have a certain average, my high school teacher wasn’t going to let people take the class unless we could convince him we would do well in the class. And I had to tell him I already had a computer and I knew how to program but I wasn’t really good at it.
Learning to program for adults is actually a problem:
“TIME DEVOTED TO LEARNING PROGRAMMING
“How long have people been trying to learn programming, and
how many hours per week do they devote to it?
We grouped the 469 responses to “How long have you been
trying to learn programming?” into five buckets: 13% have
been trying for less than one month, 19% for less than one
year, 17% for 1–3 years, 8% for 4–10 years, and 43% for
more than 10 years. In general, most respondents were not
new to programming. But although 43% reported greater than
10 years, that does not necessarily mean that they had been
continually learning for all these years. One common sentiment
we noticed was people reporting that they first tried
learning several decades ago when they were younger but
stopped due to lack of time; and now they are attempting to
re-learn since they have more free time in retirement.”
It won’t work. I’ve taught students in college.
You have to have someone who knows how to teach before they write their books. Just because someone writes an article doesn’t mean they can teach. They know something but teaching is more than giving people a bunch of facts. Teaching is presenting the information in a format that people can learn. It also means not assuming that the person who doesn’t know is communicated what the writer needs to communicate and often doesn’t about a language. Writers assume that the reader knows how to program and that isn’t always the case but they convey half of the teaching because it is assumed that they know what the writer isn’t communicating. In other words, writers write and give you commands to do something without telling you how to do something.
Some of the books out there are written by people who got their book written too quickly because they were trying to meet a deadline.
It takes a lifestyle to learn how to code: Turn the TV off.
I know adults who know microprocessors who can’t learn C because a lot of the books are too badly written.
And the reason why more people aren’t learning microprocessors is the example of why some authors can’t teach.
The author runs “DevOps” at Mozilla – pretty sure he knows what he’s talking about.
I learned BASIC at home by typing in one command every day on my Commodore 64. Then I learned it in High School and then College made me take BASIC programming and then PASCAL.
Basic was a language for people for people who couldn’t program and in my college days, everyone wouldn’t leave me alone in LAB class because they wanted me to write their programs for them.
“Despite the enormous changes which have taken place since electronic computing was invented in the 1950s, some things remain stubbornly the same. In particular, most people can’t learn to program: between 30% and 60% of every university computer science department’s intake fail the first programming course. Experienced teachers are weary but never oblivious of this fact; brighteyed beginners who believe that the old ones must have been doing it wrong learn the truth from bitter experience; and so it has been for almost two generations, ever since the subject began in the 1960s.”
https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats/
Your assumption may not be statistically representative of all Americans because:
“Today, only 2% of students study computer programming.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/02/26/computer-programming-coding-education/1947551/
If two percent of students study computer programming, maybe it is because that two percent believe they can. And if they don’t believe they can learn, they won’t because they either don’t know what it takes to learn or it is predictive prophecy: They don’t think they can so they won’t try so they don’t.
If we studied the other 98% of Americans who don’t code, we might get a more representative sample of who can and who can’t. I’ve already talked to teachers in Philadelphia who say they can’t get their kids to do their homework.
When I went to elementary school, only those in the gifted program or a full A average were allowed to touch the Commodore Pet computers in school. The teachers attitudes back in the beginning of computers was most kids wouldn’t be able to do anything with it and that attitude still existed among some teachers that I knew back when Apple I and II’s were in school. If you didn’t have a certain average, my high school teacher wasn’t going to let people take the class unless we could convince him we would do well in the class. And I had to tell him I already had a computer and I knew how to program but I wasn’t really good at it.
@Chuckz You really should write to the original author – or let him know you left comments here with your concerns.
Also, times have changed – a lot!
Learning to program for adults is actually a problem:
“TIME DEVOTED TO LEARNING PROGRAMMING
“How long have people been trying to learn programming, and
how many hours per week do they devote to it?
We grouped the 469 responses to “How long have you been
trying to learn programming?” into five buckets: 13% have
been trying for less than one month, 19% for less than one
year, 17% for 1–3 years, 8% for 4–10 years, and 43% for
more than 10 years. In general, most respondents were not
new to programming. But although 43% reported greater than
10 years, that does not necessarily mean that they had been
continually learning for all these years. One common sentiment
we noticed was people reporting that they first tried
learning several decades ago when they were younger but
stopped due to lack of time; and now they are attempting to
re-learn since they have more free time in retirement.”
http://www.pgbovine.net/publications/older-adults-learning-programming_CHI-2017.pdf