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Fundamentally, this stuff takes a certain shape of brain to get. Either it clicks, or it doesn't (not that it can't take a good while to click). I have seen the specific thing that most people won't get inaccurately described as 'variable assignment', I think it's more about looping, but either way, you can do it or you can't. You always read about someone who's trying a new method of easing students into it, confused why everybody else puts stupidly hard concepts up front. Then, later, they post about their rather high failure rate, and possibly lament that there are not enough battle-tested educational resources that are designed for this tack and that's why they failed. What's really going on is that when you put something 'hard' up front, the class self-separates into people who get it, people who think they can get it but don't yet, and people who are not going to get it, and the latter group quits. Being able to code is a lot like a Hogwarts letter: there is a lot of learning to do, there is a lot of variation in ability, you cannot do much without being taught, but there is also a baseline of being able to do it at all which most people fall short of. If you wind up with a class that cannot necessarily all do magic, the earlier you say 'now, let's all make some magic sparks', the more you have time to teach the students who can. |