[x1f604]

> The subject seems to be completely non linear

Is this not the nature of learning in general? Why is it supposed that learning things in the linear A-B-C-D fashion is even possible for most humans, rather than supposing that most people would need to revisit certain topics before learning new topics, e.g. A-B-A-D-C instead of A-B-C-D?

[throwaway71271]

By linear I did not mean the order in which you study, but rather how your understanding builds up, as in, how much time you put in, and how much you grow.

For example if your native language is subject verb object (cows eat grass) it is quite linear to learn subject object verb (cows grass eat) languages (e.g. Japanese), you put in time, and you make progress. There are other subjects where when you get stuck you cant move on, and the pedagogy and androgogy systems we have came up with for math/physics and etc are getting better and better to understand what people don't understand and how to move them further. Which on its own is quite problematic when you have a class of 30 kids and you are moving with the 'average' kid which does not exist.

In the same time, programming is fairly new, and teaching it is still evolving, educators still disagree on what is important and in which order (reminds me a bit of this Feynman video about 'Greek' versus 'Babylonian' mathematics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaUlqXRPMmY)

There was a great example someone used, the amount of people who get confused by the equal sign, and some actually never go through understanding references and values for many years:

    x=5 
    y=x
    x=6 
    print(y)

and

    a=[] 
    b=a
    a.push(1)
    print(b)

Now I am teaching my daughter and I spent about 3 days per week just on pointers and strings (We even made a card game we play from time to time https://punkx.org/c-pointer-game/), and I can see when she is stuck and what exactly she is stuck on, but how can you do that with 30 kids, when the most subtle nuance in the questions they ask can give you the deepest hint in what they are missing?