[Kalium]

You're completely right. That's a wonderfully kind, empathetic, and compassionate approach that's incredibly effective for teaching people what kind of power they are starting to have access to.

I've found it's also one that is very expensive as measured by instructional time and energy. I've also found it relatively ineffectual for teaching fundamentals.

I do not have to lecture someone about how they are unworthy and useless to know that understanding a bit of discrete mathematics, HTTP fundamentals, DNS, or relational algebra will make them better software engineers. There are absolutely people in this world who, when learning the glories of React with a codepen, will ask how things work several times and learn big-O notation... but there are far more who won't ask but would benefit from knowing anyway.

Do you think it's perhaps possible that people benefit from both a solid grasp of the often-boring fundamentals as well as feeling the joy of tinkering?

[LoganDark]

> Do you think it's perhaps possible that people benefit from both a solid grasp of the often-boring fundamentals as well as feeling the joy of tinkering?

I don't think they were explicitly excluding the former, but rather saying it's important to get someone interested before they even become interested in learning the fundamentals.

[picometer]

This seems like a good context for the quote, “if you want to build a ship, […] teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” I don’t think that Saint-Exupery intended to suggest that the yearning was enough on its own, but it makes the process so much more effective.

[Kalium]

The trick is doing so without demeaning the value of basic carpentry. Which would be obviously silly in building a ship, but in computing we frequently have people looking to become software engineers without encountering or learning the fundamentals of the field.

This particular project comes from people who regard fundamentals as optional.