Katrina's talk is a good starting point for considering the approach needed for those that don't already know programming.
I particularly like her idea of a sequence of skills to acquire as one learns to program using Go. I know of two books that are aimed at teaching new programmers. Each has an established order of presentation we can consider as we develop our progression. Both use Python, but I feel the skills and order are still relevant to Go. The first was used in a Coursera class I took. It is *Python for Informatics* by Charles Severance. This book is aimed at users wanting to using a program to process data more than user that want to be programmers. The second book inspired the first. It is *Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, 2nd Ed* by Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Meyers. This book has a more traditional CS focus and uses a bit more math that the Severance book. I think we could use a concept/skill sequence derived from these books and our own concept, examples, and practice sets as a framework for the progression of a new programmer. I cannot have an opinion related to the Tour as I arrived with decades of experience using many languages. It got me to where I needed and the reference material available worked from there. I will say that Katrina's talk rang true for me and one of the things she mentioned that the Tour does not have is the drill needed to make the concept your own. The Tour is very good at demonstrating what it intends to show, but it does not provide the directed practice that a new programmer needs. Lots of programming without direction is just typing practice. Directed practice allows the programmer to develop a level of comfort with the concepts and skills needed for true competence. On Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at 12:13:31 PM UTC-4, Will Norris wrote: > > I don't think the GopherCon 2016 videos are online yet, but when they are > I'd recommend taking a look at Katrina Owen's talk, "Mind the Gap" which > touches on exactly this topic. It might give you some ideas. > > On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 8:39 AM, Daniel Skinner <dan...@dasa.cc > <javascript:>> wrote: > >> is the Go tour really that out of touch for people with little to no >> programming experience? I'd think there's enough in there to keep one busy >> for quite a while. Now, whether that work is actually interesting to them >> is another matter... >> >> I sat my 9 year old daughter in front of the tour a few months back and >> she completed a number of samples. She had questions for words she's never >> heard so maybe extending the tour with pop-out help on jargon might be a >> nice contrast to how the tour currently compares itself to other languages >> for basic constructs (the inexperienced vs the experienced). >> >> Understanding errors on the screen is another important part that's >> pretty much uncovered, and so biased towards those that have dealt with >> errors before from other languages. >> >> On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 10:16 AM Matt Aimonetti <mattai...@gmail.com >> <javascript:>> wrote: >> >>> I just wanted to point out a post I published today talking about the >>> fact that we are often leaving new / less experienced Go developers >>> high and dry: >>> https://medium.com/@mattetti/go-is-for-everyone-b4f84be04c43 >>> >>> I'd love to see what you all in mind to help new or junior developers. >>> Maybe share some of the pain points you've experienced or seen (for >>> instance setting up the Go path, finding resources to get started etc...) >>> I'm thinking about a bunch of very short posts on basic topics and maybe a >>> real beginner tour of Go. We are going to do a beginner night next month at >>> our LA/Santa Monica Go meetup and hopefully better understand what the >>> current pain points/blockers are. >>> >>> What do you think? >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "golang-nuts" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to golang-nuts...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "golang-nuts" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to golang-nuts...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "golang-nuts" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
