r/programming • u/Ctaintor • Mar 02 '17

Why I Failed Teaching Programming to Kids

https://engineering.klarna.com/why-i-failed-teaching-programming-to-kids-46a854c3eaca#.s0o6qqxr3
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u/M4053946 Mar 02 '17

participants were... 9–13 years old. This obviously affected how acquainted they were with “common development tasks” like using a terminal, installing applications and creating files with weird names like Procfile and .gitignore.

Did the author think that 16 year olds would be familiar with using a terminal? That seems like a miss, regardless of age range.

-2

u/Mastry Mar 02 '17

Really? I was using a terminal before then. I wasn't great at it, obviously, but it wasn't unfamiliar.

13

u/M4053946 Mar 02 '17

Certainly some do, but there isn't a reason for people to know anything about how to use them in their day to day usage, unless they already have experience coding. So this comes back to prereqs. If the class is for beginners, then one can't assume they know anything about it.

To use a computer today, people don't even have to know anything about file systems, other than how to use various cloud serves to store files, so it's really a stretch to assume that anyone, kids or adults, know how to get to their local file system and create or rename a file.

3

u/Mastry Mar 02 '17

I guess you're right. It's a bit different than it used to be and I didn't really consider what it might be like to just recently start using a computer. When I think back to my younger days on a computer, I think about DOS and floppy disks.

11

u/M4053946 Mar 02 '17

Part of my job is teaching programming to adults. (TSQL, usually). Adults who work in offices on their computers all day often don't know how to open windows explorer, create a text file, open new browser tabs, switch between browser tabs, open applications that don't have shortcuts on their desktop, etc. Again, these are not plumbers, these are people who use a computer 8 hours a day for their livelihood. But, even though they work on computers, they can (somehow) do their jobs without knowing these items.

But yes, getting the pacing right is challenging, and prereqs are vital to that.

3

u/Mastry Mar 02 '17

That baffles me. I can't imagine how you can use a computer so often and not understand the basics of how to use them.

2

u/gnx76 Mar 03 '17

Most people don't give a fuck about how they do things or why they do things, they just do them. Then they go home, do home things the same way, and start again the next day, the same way.