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A chat with my sister's kid about learning to code really got to me
She's 14 and told me she tried to start with Python but gave up after two days because the first tutorial had her printing 'Hello World' and then immediately jumped into something called 'list comprehensions'. I said maybe she should try something more visual first, like Scratch, but she said that felt like a baby's toy and she wanted to do 'real' coding. Why do so many beginner resources skip the fun part of making stuff you can see?
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ruby_henderson3626d ago
...and the thing is, Scratch is actually pretty legit for understanding logic. My nephew was exactly the same way at 14, thought it was for little kids. Then I showed him some of the crazy complex games people build on there and he actually got into it for a while. But yeah, the jump from "hello world" to stuff like list comprehensions is totally brutal, I remember trying to learn from a YouTube series once and they went from variables straight to classes in like 10 minutes, I just closed the tab.
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joel_jones3mo ago
Yeah, that's why I always tell people to start with simple games... you can see results right away.
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the_wyatt3mo ago
Totally agree with you @joel_jones. I read an article that said the same thing, that quick wins keep you from getting bored. Starting small just makes sense.
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