Learning to code is sort of like learning a foreign language; you’ll make lots of mistakes that you can laugh at (and about) later on. In this talk, Kylie Stradley points out that many of us make the same mistakes when learning to develop Rails applications — and talks about how we make such mistakes, and the long, difficult road that beginners follow when learning to program.
Liz Abinante’s talk from RubyConf 2014 talks about the current trend toward teaching everyone to program. Is this a good idea? Are the participants in the various code schools really succeeding?
How can we encourage more girls and women to learn programming? Jessica McKellar’s talk, from PyCon 2014, has some very interesting insights into what has worked in Tennessee high schools.