My friend's kid in Chicago asked me to teach him Python last summer.

He was 12 and got stuck on a simple loop for over an hour. I told him to take a break, but he said, 'No, I need to see why it's not counting to 10.' He figured it out by writing each step on paper. It made me think we push beginners toward the screen too fast. How many of you started by just writing things out by hand?

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the_oliver7mo ago

Seriously, that paper method is key. @patriciah99 mentioning recursion is spot on. I had to draw little boxes for linked lists before it clicked. Why do we act like typing is thinking? For a while loop, writing "i=0, check, print, i=1" makes the mistake obvious. That kid figured out more about debugging in an hour than some do in a month.

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patriciah997mo ago

Totally agree. That kid's paper method is how I finally got my head around recursion.

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keith2646mo ago

Remember when I tried to debug a loop by just staring at the screen? The paper method saved me from myself. I guess we all need to be that kid sometimes.

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