[chriseidhof]

This really speaks to me.

I teach SwiftUI to people. I've written books and teach classes. The books don't work nearly as well (because many people just read it instead of actually practicing SwiftUI). The classes I teach ("workshops") are extremely hands on, I try to defer my explanations to after the exercise as much as possible. The feedback is often very positive, and I can tell afterwards that people have really grasped stuff. I know I'm just trying to confirm my biases here as well, but to me, there's nothing better than doing stuff first and then analyzing it.

[analog31]

Granted I've been out of school for decades. The textbooks were always an accessory to classroom instruction and not intended for stand-alone learning. Math students quickly figured out that the most important thing was doing the problems, the text was essentially a reference, and the classroom was for guidance through the concepts, and for motivation.

Of course the humanities classes were about books, so learning how to study the books themselves was a major part of the practice.

Programming seems to lend itself particularly well to self learning because the computer allows for endless trial-and-error practice.

[ahartmetz]

I think I'd prefer overview, exercise, details. You need some kind of mental framework. I guess you don't just dive right in, otherwise you wouldn't be getting good feedback ;)

What I really hate is explaining the solution before explaining the problem. It's a terrible way to teach and it's quite common. I like to say that there are two bad ways to teach: The cookbook (do this, then do that) and the maths textbook (solutions without problems or context). The good way is a combination of them with some additional things that neither of them has, like motivating examples, relevant anecdotes etc.