I sometimes reminisce and think about the past, and how I learned programming. I constantly think how bad the resources back then were, I didn’t know English, and there weren’t any Arabic(my native tongue) resources.

For some reason, I think this is a pro rather than a con, even though the average joe might see it as a con. I think it helped me build, a sort of persistence, when it comes to learning stuff about computers.

You give a kid a computer, and a vast amount of time, without any clear objective, and you’ll notice that they will somehow learn how to use the computer. Sometimes, it will actually surprise you how good they are.

It’s not just Computers, I learned English through this way as well, and a sort of bonus of learning how to use Computers. I didn’t intend to learn English, but somehow picked it up alongside Computer Programming.

Kids are smart, no matter how dumb you think they are, they will sometimes surprise you. This also applies to adults as well, give a person time and a tool and they’ll pick up on how to use it.

Manuals, I think, sometimes limit the way a person understands something. It’s not due to them being bad necessarily, it’s just that human experimentation with a tool often yields a deeper and more persistence understanding.

This is not to say that they are useless, sometimes you wanna pick up a skill without really wanting to spend hours and hours to understanding every small detail.

One of the reasons I try to give an expert’s opinion to beginners is that, sometimes you gotta let the beginners figure it out. Sometimes the material has to be harder than what they anticipate or currently understand, because they need to look and experiment on their own time.

They might fail a couple of times because of this, but ultimately it is the right decision.

Which makes me wonder about the role environment plays on education, and how far could we optimize it. I learned English and Computer Programming due to having a very Internet-esc environment. Maybe future learning facilities will not have teachers, and will only have students. Experts then are required to visit the learning facilities at select times, and students learn from other students.