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My friend said coding was just memorizing commands and I had to set him straight
We were grabbing coffee yesterday and he told me, 'Isn't it just learning a bunch of words by heart?' I explained that it's more like learning to give clear instructions to a very literal friend. I showed him a simple Python loop I wrote last week to rename 200 files at once (it saved me hours). The logic, not the exact words, is what matters. Starting with that mindset makes it way less scary. Has anyone else had to explain what coding actually is to a total newbie?
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rowan6661mo ago
Honestly, I get where your friend is coming from though. For a lot of basic stuff, it kind of is just remembering how to write things a certain way. I took a class last year and we spent weeks just memorizing the exact format for different loops and conditionals. The logic part only came later.
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price.alice1mo ago
Ugh, that sounds exactly like my intro class.
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mason36118d ago
Wait, didn't that teacher ever explain WHY you'd use one loop over another? My buddy took coding in high school and all they did was copy stuff from a textbook. He hated it until he started making little games on his own and then the logic clicked way later. Seems backwards to me.
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