Thus watching tutorial video help you to learn code faster

One time in the Papafam community, I was given the opportunity to speak with some great minds about the best ways to learn and improve our skills as software engineers or programmers.

One standout discussion was on the work of the remarkable Dr. Felienne Hermans, who gave a talk titled ["How to teach programming (and other things)?"]

with the timestamp [00:41:18.230] you can find it on YouTube with the title above or link (https://youtu.be/g1ib43q3uXQ?si=ONenEj67PbRK7F28).

Dr. Felienne discussed an experiment exploring different methods of teaching programming to high school students, involving three groups:

1. The first group wrote their own code before receiving expert solutions to study.

2. The second group wrote code but also received explanations alongside expert solutions.

3. The third group only studied expert code with explanations, without writing any code themselves.

Surprisingly, both the second and third groups performed equally well and outperformed the first group.

This suggests that studying expert code with explanations is as effective, if not more so, than practicing coding due to lower cognitive load and improved problem-solving chunk retention.

This finding challenges traditional programming education methods, emphasizing the effectiveness of learning through reading and understanding expert examples over active coding practice.

Watching great minds, like

@Sonny Sangha

build clones and share their thought processes is not a waste of time.

From the experiment, many of us can relate to being either in the second group, who reverse the order by watching these experts code and then coding along with them, or in the third group, who access the expert’s code on GitHub and follow along with their explanations in the videos.

This means we are learning! Don’t just take my word for it; take the word of researchers who have conducted these experiments.

In conclusion, when you watch great minds code and explain their thought processes, never feel like you are not improving. Believe me, you are learning through what science calls perceptual learning. Keep going, Papafam, and keep being students. We will get there together!

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