Programming is something I dabbled in since I was 11, copying BASIC programs out of the back of Boy's Life magazine, I think. But I didn't really understand it, and I didn't really think I could succeed at it, until I learned how to use a debugger.
I think one thing that really prevented me from understanding programming was that I couldn't see what was going on underneath. I would code a program, run it, it would die with the message "Segmentation Fault," and I would have to go over the program again with only a small idea of where it had failed. Using a debugger to go through it line-by-line, and look at all of the current values for the variables, was a tremendous boost for me, not only in ability, but also in confidence.
Unfortunately, no one really showed me how to use a debugger, especially early on. It was something I had to find accidentally at age 22 or so; I think it is taken for granted sometimes. The closest I came to seeing a debugger in a class was a 10-minute overview of Eclipse in a 300-level Software Engineering class, and that was after I'd taken at least six programming classes.
The best thing you can do after you have a good project picked out is help set up the environment and show him the tools a programmer has at their disposal.
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Programming is something I dabbled in since I was 11, copying BASIC programs out of the back of Boy's Life magazine, I think. But I didn't really understand it, and I didn't really think I could succeed at it, until I learned how to use a debugger.
I think one thing that really prevented me from understanding programming was that I couldn't see what was going on underneath. I would code a program, run it, it would die with the message "Segmentation Fault," and I would have to go over the program again with only a small idea of where it had failed. Using a debugger to go through it line-by-line, and look at all of the current values for the variables, was a tremendous boost for me, not only in ability, but also in confidence.
Unfortunately, no one really showed me how to use a debugger, especially early on. It was something I had to find accidentally at age 22 or so; I think it is taken for granted sometimes. The closest I came to seeing a debugger in a class was a 10-minute overview of Eclipse in a 300-level Software Engineering class, and that was after I'd taken at least six programming classes.
The best thing you can do after you have a good project picked out is help set up the environment and show him the tools a programmer has at their disposal.