[loup-vaillant]

I was taught programming at a (quite big) university at Toulouse, France. First years were taught Ocaml (Caml-light, actually). The first 2 hours took place in a lecture hall and were about the lexicon of the language: authorized characters, possible identifiers, keywords… A typical "by rote" course.

On my second year, I took a more specialized route. Among other thing, we were again taught Ocaml, as if we learned programming for the first time —which was the case for many of us. This time we were no more than 30. The first 2 hours directly jumped into expressions and functions. Much less to learn, much more to understand. Overall, this second course was faster, by a factor of at least 3. And the class understood it all.

Anyway, one aspect of rote learning we always had was the downgrading of our program in the case of minor syntax errors.