A major hurdle I found as a beginner in programming was the lack of immediate reward. I was studying Automate the
Boring Stuff as my first text, and it took around six months of slow but steady studying to understand and retain the first of two parts of the book.
The material was about the fundamentals of programming (loops, lists, dictionaries). I found it hard to stay focused because the applications and usefulness of the concepts weren’t immediately obvious (any problem I could solve at that point could easily be solved better with a ‘no-code’ solution). Some of the concepts also took a few days to understand, while I was struggling with maintaining motivation.
I’ve since used other learning materials, and now I better understand why new programming courses nowadays (like Harvard’s CS50) like to start their courses with the Scratch language. It communicates earlier the usefulness of the fundamentals (e.g. using if and while statements to animate a cartoon character).
This lack of immediate useful application (until months of study later) might not be the only reason, but it may well be a major one. It can cause people to give up even if they are diligent and dedicated in other fields (where the rewards arrive earlier).
The material was about the fundamentals of programming (loops, lists, dictionaries). I found it hard to stay focused because the applications and usefulness of the concepts weren’t immediately obvious (any problem I could solve at that point could easily be solved better with a ‘no-code’ solution). Some of the concepts also took a few days to understand, while I was struggling with maintaining motivation.
I’ve since used other learning materials, and now I better understand why new programming courses nowadays (like Harvard’s CS50) like to start their courses with the Scratch language. It communicates earlier the usefulness of the fundamentals (e.g. using if and while statements to animate a cartoon character).
This lack of immediate useful application (until months of study later) might not be the only reason, but it may well be a major one. It can cause people to give up even if they are diligent and dedicated in other fields (where the rewards arrive earlier).