

Please Understand Learning to Code - micrypt
http://dave.fayr.am/posts/2012-05-15-please-understand-learning-to-code.html

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hsmyers
I'm certainly willing to believe the cited paper (both versions), but it does
seem to contradict my own experience in teaching unlikely students how to
program. I've found that a excellent litmus test is the ability of the student
to follow the recipe on the back of a bag of Chocolate Chips. If the result is
at all edible then I am reasonably sure that they can make the necessary leap
from that kind of information to that which is needed in programming. A recipe
has all of the usual things that a program does, they just look a little
different. Sequence, loop, decision etc. Maybe these people would have been in
the 'We can program group' of the mentioned test, I don't know---just know
I've managed to teach a lot of unexpected folk the basics (often using basic
for that matter :) )...

