Loading…
32
I was at a library coding workshop in Austin and the instructor did something weird with loops
She made us write a for loop to print numbers 1 to 10, but then she had us delete the whole thing and rewrite it as a while loop instead... it felt pointless at first, but it actually made me understand how the logic works behind the scenes. Has anyone else had a teacher use a method like that to explain a basic concept?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
derekhenderson7mo ago
Read a blog post once that called this "unrolling the abstraction." Makes you see the gears turning.
3
alice1216mo ago
Abstracting away details is what lets engineers build on top of complex systems without reinventing the wheel every time. Not every step needs to be walked through manually.
5
flores.emma7mo ago
Had a physics teacher who made us solve the same problem with and without friction. It seemed like busywork until I saw how the "ideal" version hid all the real complexity. Breaking things down to a simpler, clunkier version forces you to actually build the model in your head instead of just copying a pattern. That coding workshop trick is totally the same idea.
1