Don't Teach Coding. Lindsey D. Handley

      The arcs called Languages Without and Languages Within will “zoom out” – beyond you, beyond us, beyond this book, beyond the present day. In Languages Without, we'll piece together the epic story of language – literally, the story of stories themselves. It began before this book, indeed before the invention of writing and is still unfolding today. In Languages Within, we'll examine recent neuroscience about how the human brain processes language, how it acquires fluencies – and ultimately, how it earns the right to participate in that epic story of language that is unfolding all around us.

      Human beings are linguistic creatures; and programming languages are one of the weirdest linguistic things we've done in the last few thousand years. The bigger our historical lens, the easier it is to see just how weirdly magical they are.

Who Is This Book For?

Mainly, this book is for K-12 teachers of coding, or any educated adult with an interest in the teaching and learning of programming languages. We assume no prior coding knowledge on the part of the reader, however.

      This is because, increasingly often in the coming years, teachers who once taught a different subject will find themselves suddenly teaching coding. So we wanted this book to be of use to teachers in those situations. As a rhetorical strategy, we'll often seem to be speaking to the reader as if they were a coding student. If you are a teacher who is also a student, feel free to assume we are speaking to you.

      If you are a teacher who is not also a student – ask yourself, why aren't you a student? In this field, the learning never stops. There's always another language, another library, another framework, another tool-chain, another repository, another engine, another platform, another service, another environment, another paradigm, another sub-field, another beautiful idea.

      The teaching and learning don't stop. The job titles just change.

      Finally, because our goal is to teach coding teachers what all too many do not know before they begin teaching – even expert coders may find insights here that they were never taught (because their teachers did not know). Thus, your expertise in coding will not prevent you from enjoying this book. We expect the book to be readable by: industry veterans while their unit tests run, computer science grad students in between meetings with their advisors, and battle-tested hackers amidst contributions to open-source projects.

      Many of us appreciate the power of K-12 education. The students of today will be our colleagues tomorrow.

Let's Do It!

      We hope this book will empower teachers and students to write the future of education – one line of code at a time.

      At any time, for any reason, join us.

       dont-teach.com/coding