[duopixel]

I really appreciate the new learning tools to become more adept at programming and the command line. However, I often find myself mindlessly re-typing the commands being thrown at me without really understanding what's going on, or why I'm being asked to do it.

I liked the approach of Ruby Monks where they give you a task and let you guess the syntax. If you got stuck you then look at the solution.

I don't mean to make less of try git, or any other interactive tutorial. We live in a wonderful time where we are able to learn powerful tools without even installing them, so I almost feel bad about making this criticism. But I think current tools could be improved by removing some of the wizardy feeling and allowing users to play around and trying to figure out stuff on their own.

[Stratego]

This is a great point. But before you can make people work at understanding something, you have to make them realize that they have a stake in trying to learn.

I don't think everyone (and certainly not myself) was able to understand the value of Git at first glance and decide to invest time and effort into learning about its inner workings.

Normal Code School courses and Ruby Monk challenges are made for people who already have somewhat of a vested interested in learning. Something that pushes them to challenge themselves beyond a simple demo/interactive tutorial. People like that are (sadly) a limited subset, we're trying to broaden that.