> When I was working on Learn Python The Hard Way I was frustrated by how often I’d have to explain that the book is for a total beginner.
[snip]
> What I propose is we have beginning coders and early coders. I got this idea from a painting teacher who kept referring to students who had never painted as “beginners”, but those who had painted for about one class as “early”. The reasoning is that you need a way to differentiate people who don’t know a damn thing vs. people who know the basics but just simply suck at them. Teaching a beginner is very different from teaching someone who’s already been doing it for a bit and just needs more training.
> For example, a beginning coder doesn’t know how to type the | (pipe) character. They don’t even know it’s called a “pipe”. I’m not joking about this. Professionals actually don’t believe me when I tell them this, but it’s true. Beginners have zero experience so simple things like making a text file, opening terminal, and even the idea that you can type words at a computer and it will do stuff, are simply unknown to them. To teach a beginner effectively requires this level of information slowly fed to them in reasonable chunks.
https://zedshaw.com/2015/06/16/early-vs-beginning-coders/
Quotes:
> When I was working on Learn Python The Hard Way I was frustrated by how often I’d have to explain that the book is for a total beginner.
[snip]
> What I propose is we have beginning coders and early coders. I got this idea from a painting teacher who kept referring to students who had never painted as “beginners”, but those who had painted for about one class as “early”. The reasoning is that you need a way to differentiate people who don’t know a damn thing vs. people who know the basics but just simply suck at them. Teaching a beginner is very different from teaching someone who’s already been doing it for a bit and just needs more training.
> For example, a beginning coder doesn’t know how to type the | (pipe) character. They don’t even know it’s called a “pipe”. I’m not joking about this. Professionals actually don’t believe me when I tell them this, but it’s true. Beginners have zero experience so simple things like making a text file, opening terminal, and even the idea that you can type words at a computer and it will do stuff, are simply unknown to them. To teach a beginner effectively requires this level of information slowly fed to them in reasonable chunks.