Hello internet! If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you know I’ve been participating in #100DaysOfProjects. (check out my whole thread here).
So far I’ve been doing a lot of research into the problems that new programmers have. I’ve collected 3 core problems that I want to try and address.
Shutting down in the face of large problems I see programmers, especially very new programmers, have a lot of trouble with high level problems. People who have this problems will hear a suggestion like “practice your programming by making a todo list app” and they’ll have no idea where to start.
Translating Ideas into Code Those who can get past the ‘shutting down’ phase, have trouble going from abstract concept of what the code should do, to running code. One constant that I saw was the use of the word ‘translate’, which I think has interesting implications.
Getting stuck on problems/errors/jargon This one should be familiar to all programmers. New programmers encounter error messages that they don’t understand, or find solutions to those errors that they don’t understand.
The typical response when a new programmer encounters these issues is they get specific solutions to their one specific problem. What I want to do is provide the tools to make solving these problems easier.
I don’t have the solution to all of these at the moment. But I suspect that they have similar root causes.
Right now I’m planning on creating an ebook to address these. I’m having an amazing time working in public on this project, so if you’re interested in the behind the scenes, the best place to go is my Twitter. If you want to hear about the launch, and get some cool weekly project ideas in the meantime, you should definitely be in the weeklyproject.club