Engineering #2: to learn, type!

Girl at the Keyboards (Walter Gramatté, 1922)

I think this series will reach into hundreds of different fun posts, but at its start I will only be able to reference a handful of things. So: Launch School again. Something I admire from the intro to their “Introduction to Programming with Python [or JavaScript, or Ruby]” book:

Reading about programming and writing a program aren't the same things. If you read this entire book but don't write any code, you may understand, intellectually, how to code, but you won't know how to do it. If someone asks you to solve a problem with a computer program, you won't be able to complete the task.

There is a "muscle memory" aspect to programming that books and courses often overlook. With the vast amount of information a programmer must remember, practicing some skills until they become automatic is unquestionably crucial. It doesn't require much effort; it happens naturally through repetition and practice. You can learn with your fingers; when you do, you free up your brain to focus on higher-level abstractions.

If you want a real shot at learning how to code, you should do every exercise in this book. Suppose you're going to learn to play a musical instrument. In that case, you must practice your scales on that instrument and develop proficiency. Both are necessary before you can play the instrument well.

Think of the exercises as though you are a musician practicing musical scales and writing a program as playing the instrument. Use the activities to practice and cement the basics into your fingers. The more you practice, the more coding becomes second nature and subconscious, which helps you learn to program.

This is such a useful request, because without it I would just not know, right now, how much I ought to type. I’d probably still create all the files discussed in the book, but might sometimes use autocomplete to write them, and wouldn’t type out as many REPL examples in the book. I wouldn’t think that much about my typing. But with the request, I know to aim for the maximum amount (within common sense).