[another_story]

I've been teaching CS at the high school level for 15 years and the biggest pain point has been breaking kids out of the way they've been taught to approach learning. Since everything is so test focused, what they learn in most subjects is to get a decent grade they need to read, regurgitate and expand using a predefined set of keywords. Test questions are predictable and formulaic.

Then they get to CS where anything code based requires them to tackle a novel situation and to actually think things through logically, and they panic. They're not used to breaking down larger problems into sensible parts or taking those and creating new solutions. Basically, they don't understand how to iterate on their design and slowly suss out an answer. I usually spend the first months teaching Python and showing them the process of problem solving with code, walking through my thinking each time and how I'd use my resources to find what I need.

The only subject which comes close is math, and it's far more obvious what methods to apply and the steps are better defined.