| In addition to the other suggestions here: Ask the student what they want to build or achieve. Like if they want to make a game, or an app, then sit with them to code the simplest form of that, step by step, starting with the player data model (score/HP/ammo), then the HUD, and so on. You may even write the first version all by yourself while they watch, accompanied by your live commentary. Let them know that development is generally about sending messages/commands to things (APIs) that send messages to other things (CPU/GPU) on your behalf, so they can understand early on that coding is as much about SDKs and frameworks as it's about languages and platforms, and the ways of talking to/between them changes across APIs, so one of the most important skills is learning how to learn; to figure out how to dig through all the different ways of achieving the same result. Tell them they can generally make things easier by putting in more intermediary messengers between themselves and the screen: Dev » Unity/Unreal/SpriteKit » C#/Swift » DirectX/OpenGL/Metal » iOS/macOS/Windows » App Store/Steam » Player and they generally get more control by removing the middlemen, but if they change a layer in the chain they might need to relearn how to talk to all of them. |