[_dain_]

It seems the children's model is BASIC-like in that a function call is just equivalent to "GOTO <#LINE>"

>The part that is missing is the stack.

Bingo. Function-call-as-GOTO and not knowing about the stack are the root cause of so many confused questions on beginner programming forums. You can spot it a mile away because they tend to write functions without any parameters or return values. Instead, they pass information around by mutating global state everywhere. It's difficult to fit the idea of parameters and return values into a mental world that doesn't include a call stack, so their absence in novice code isn't surprising.

[Izkata]

Beginners of any age.

A friend in college (Aerospace major) took an intro to programming course in C, and was calling main() to get back to the menu at the start of his program instead of using any sort of loop. Was so confused why he had to choose "quit" from the menu a whole bunch of times before it would actually exit.

[_dain_]

There's also this infamous textbook: https://wozniak.ca/blog/2018/06/25/1/index.html

>Why is this important? As I read the book (and if you read my notes, you know where this is going) I started to notice something in the wording and tone. The further I progressed the more I became convinced of it, and I think it explains how he managed to mangle the explanation of C pointers so badly.

>I don’t think he understands the call stack.

[...]

>Suppose you’re used to writing BASIC for small memory electronic devices and you learn about C. You read about pointers and realize something: it’s possible to write a subroutine that can change variables without knowing their names. It’s manna from heaven! You don’t have to devote global variables to being the “parameters” of your subroutines anymore. Life is great.

>This is the mindset I think Traister had and never got past.