Learning About Learning

Session Overview

How do we learn programming languages?

  • REPL
  • Iteration
  • Random Contextual Interference
  • Programming Assistants

REPL

Read, Evaluate, Print Loop


You need to be able to be able to get immediate feedback on what you are doing!


Interactive!

Iteration

Build on immediate feedback… immediately.

  • Iterate early and often.
  • Just start.
  • Incremental bites.
  • Build from small steps, testing each step in the process.
  • Leverage the REPL!!! :)

Iteration

What not to do:

  • Write all of your code then evaluate at the end.
  • Write your code in the command line, remember what worked, then rewrite it in a script.
  • Continually overwrite your code.
  • Spend hours doing research and thinking about what might work.

What to do

  • Evaluate every little step of your code as you develop it.
  • Write your code in a script then use an IDE functionality to run in a REPL
  • Save scratch work in a file where organization and comments clearly point to functional code.
  • Jump in! You will learn faster by doing.

Session Overview

How do we learn programming languages?

  • REPL
  • Iteration
  • Random Contextual Interference
  • Programming Assistants

Random Contextual Interference

Programming Assistants

  • Use programming assistants to help you learn.
  • Ask them to explain what they are doing and why.
  • Ask them to teach you.
  • (Remember, they can be wrong)

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