Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Yes, It Sucks And Is Not Your Fault
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2014 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Last night I was talking with some folks at Subcontinental Drift (open mic for South Asian-ish folks) who are paratechnical but find learning to program frightening or intimidating. It's not their fault; we (technologists and educators) basically suck at helping people understand that
- this is indeed hard; it's not your fault if you have trouble
- but we have a lot of different approaches that work for different learning styles; finding the learning styles that work for you is pretty useful
- and if you try, and try a different approach when you get stuck, you WILL make progress
- and none of it is magic
- and none of it was God-given to the elite who currently act like it's easy
Nothing here is particularly new. But we gotta say it, because there are so many people saying or implying the opposite.
