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Ben Halpern Subscriber for CodeNewbie

Posted on with Erin A Olinick

How Would You Explain Coding to a Beginner?

Coding is like...following a recipe. It's like tending a garden, building a house solving a puzzle. Have you heard these metaphors? What do you think? Others? Are they relevant?

How would *you* explain coding to a beginner?


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Top comments (5)

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urielbitton profile image
Uriel Bitton

Coding can be thought of as a kind of language that you use to communicate with computers. Just like how you might use English, Spanish or another language to communicate with other people, you use a programming language to communicate with a computer or device.

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msnmongare profile image
Sospeter Mong'are

I agree to this

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

The old analogy that we are the chefs who write the detailed recipes for the cooks is still quite good.

Apart that what good cooks know is that you can be very relaxed when you follow the cooking recipe and still end up with something pretty good. Like I am doing lasagnas, but I have no meat and tomato sauce, so I put zuchini and goat's cheese instead, and it's still delicious.

Computers are not like that, they are very fast dumb asshole who insist in doing what we explicitely told them instead of what we wanted them to do.

So maybe I would use the analogy of being that we are the dudes who try to write the Ikea instructions, knowing that anything unclear will result in the computer being lost, going through all kind of pain to be really clear reallly detailed, but still knowing our ikea instructions will be buggy anyway.

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neomachaba profile image
NeoMachaba

Coding is the writing of
specific instructions to manipulate data.

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brokepoliceman profile image
brokepoliceman

As for me, I concur. Drive Mad