Do The Work

Credit

Nathan Bean's CIS 400

https://people.cs.ksu.edu/~nhbean/cis400/a-learning-programming/

The person doing the work is the person doing the learning.
- Various Educators

Myth

Some people are just natural born programmers, and others simply cannot learn to program.

Programming is

writing steps to solve problems

in a way that a

computer can perform those steps

We must learn to express steps with

exactitude and precision

and understand

how a computer functions

to be able to program

Fixed Mindset

I don't understand this.

This is too hard.

I can't learn programming.

I give up.

Growth Mindset

I don't understand this... yet!

I love a good challenge!

I'm learning to program a little at a time!

I'll keep trying and get better!

Jean Piaget

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Genetic Epistemology

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Learning

• Assimilation: adding new knowledge to existing structures
• Accommodation: learning knowledge for which no existing mental structures exist

Accommodation requires

significant stimulus

and a

growth mindset

to achieve

Image Credit: Memegenerator

Stage Theory

• Sensorimotor: uses senses to interact
• Preoperational: thinking symbolically
• Concrete Operational: think logically about concrete events
• Formal Operational: formulate and test hypotheses

Image Credit: Semantic Scholar

The Developmental Epistemology of Computer Programming

Lister & Teague, et. al.

AKA how we learn to program

1. Sensorimotor

• Cannot trace code with >= 50% accuracy
• Dominant problem-solving strategy is trial and error

2. Preoperational

• Can trace code with >= 50% accuracy
• Traces without abstracting any meaning from code
• Cannot see relationships between lines of code
• Struggles to make effective use of diagrammatic abstractions of code
• Dominant problem-solving strategy is quasi-random code changes and copious trial runs

3. Concrete Operational

• Dominant problem-solving strategy is hasty design, futile patching
• Can establish purpose of code by working backwards from execution results
• Tends to reduce levels of abstraction to make concepts more understandable

4. Formal Operational

• Uses hypothetico-deductive reasoning (formulates and tests hypotheses)
• Reads code rather than traces to deduce purpose

Science of Learning

• Sleep
• Exercise
• Senses
• Patterns
• Memory
• Multitasking

Summary

• You can learn to program, just like many other students have before you
• It will take hard work and can be frustrating at times
• You'll need to read and write A LOT of code
• There is no shortcut - you must DO THE WORK

How to Help

• Get good, regular sleep
• Exercise regularly
• Engage with the content in the course
• Take notes, draw diagrams, annotate code
• Don't multitask while studying
• Don't copy/paste code - retype it!
• Read code by other developers and try to understand it - use GitHub