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alexhanstoday at 5:26 PM2 repliesview on HN

I've helped people get into programming face to face and also in a site I liked called exercism which also had a multi language track unit test passing style which I really value and it was purely command line, and I can't stress enough how important the command line is for me for people who want to dabble. Nowadays it's easier to get people into the command line because of Claude/codex.

I only have browsed your site from a phone and looks interesting but I wanted to ask if you had particular insights around getting people to approach learning, design through tests, breaking down problems, without having someone to guide them. Have you had a chance to observe people using your tool and adjust or it's been mostly dog fooding something you would've loved to have.


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acleytoday at 5:57 PM

I've also trained over 100 students in Python back in 2021, when Python was often looked down upon in academia for not being a low-level language. My belief has always been that if someone learns one programming language properly, they can pick up another in no time.I've seen beginners spend months going through 300-video YouTube playlists just to learn JavaScript. People don't need 300 videos to learn a programming language they just need to understand the fundamentals and build projects.

This project, however, is aimed at people who already know a programming language but want to understand what goes on behind the scenes of popular software: how it's designed, why certain architectural decisions are made, and what things to avoid.

tccoletoday at 6:28 PM

Oh that’s really interesting, I never considered that people using Claude has probably made the command line easier to learn.

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