> Start slow, build your foundation, learn your bits and bytes,
> data structures and sorting algorithms first then venture out.
Maybe that works if you've already convinced yourself that you're going to learn to program no matter what. That certainly wasn't me, though.In my experience, the challenge for beginners is that they lose interest and make no progress at all, not that they take some suboptimal path. It's like picking up a guitar. You can come up with the Perfect Five-Year Roadmap and preach about how someone should first learn music theory and proper form before taking a crack at it. But for most people, that's dull and they'd never learn guitar if they had to do that before jumping in and just trying. I think beginners should optimize for doing anything at all, and nothing should be advised against as a suboptimal route. The optimal route is the one that compels them, even if it amounts to faking it til they make it with a game framework and devoting 75% of their time to things completely unrelated to programming. Sorting algorithms? Bits and bytes? Seriously? I started dozing off during that sentence and I've been programming in some form for at least 10 years. That's not how you're going to woo most people into programming. |
Oh come on now. That's hardly the same thing as suggesting someone could put in a few hours with a decent resource and see where they get without needing it to be in game format, for goodness sake.