[azhenley]

It is worth pointing out that your style of learning might be different than others', and gender has been found to be one such difference [1]. There are quite a few studies that have found tinkering to be done far more often by males, but is not necessarily more effective.

[1] ftp://ftp.cs.orst.edu/pub/burnett/chi06-genderTinker.pdf

[paulcole]

The myth of "learning styles" was discussed here pretty recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810980

[gowld]

The myth of the "myth of learning styles" is also discussed there. The 'debunked' "learning styles" was a very specific hypothesis about audio vs visual vs tactile modality, not a disproof that there are any differences in how people learn.

[azhenley]

That is a very different thing.

This is not "visual/auditory learning" styles, but what strategy do you use to figure something out.

[fairpx]

Actually the core of what I was trying to say is not about learning styles at all. You can use a real-world editor and a completely different learning style to create a real world application (by following along tutorials for example). The big difference, and that was the point I was trying to make, is that in a real code editor, you're learning while building in a real-world environment. Even if you stop in the middle of your journey, you will have built something that you can share with friends. Whereas these types of apps will take you through a journey which is great, but I wonder how many take the step of going to their computers, opening an editor and building their first real application.