[pingyong]

>I've learned things after being corrected by a teacher, and then I practised on my own until the next mistake, at which point I was corrected again, and so on.

Yeah, that actually makes sense. I suppose with programming (or anything CS related) I had this feedback loop much more readily available in forums, IRC or Stackoverflow etc. so I never really appreciated having this from a teacher. But outside of CS topics it might not be that easy.

[mattkrause]

Programming is also special in that you get quick, objective feedback from the compiler and tests themselves.

That's a lot harder to get in many fields.

[minkzilla]

That is really the most basic part of CS however. Anyone can fumble through with trial and error to get things to work. Design is the hard part, and you can trick yourself into thinking you designed something well just because it compiles and spits out what looks right.

[mattkrause]

"Does it compile" is indeed a low bar to clear, but you can also get fairly quick data on "how fast is it?" by benchmarking, and sometimes even "how well does it work?" (ML, compilers, etc).