myrmepropagandistDec 13

I have discovered that teaching programming goes much better with my fifth grade students if I take the time to teach them about all the symbols I think of as "normal" that are totally new to them.

"These are square brackets, you'll find them over the 'enter' key we use them for lists. In programming we have three kinds of brackets..."

This reduced confusion so much. And I feel a little silly for not realizing that OF COURSE they don't know what they characters are or how to type them.

Show threadJae

@futurebird I only understood the difference between brackets and parenthesis after writing a parser like… after doing programming for like 7 years. I was probably 24-25.

I just called them circle brackets, square brackets and squiggly brackets until then.

Dec 14 at 11:04amWeb
Show threadMartin KennyDec 14
@SilbinaryWolf @futurebird I've been programming for nearly 50 years, and I still mostly say round brackets, square brackets, and curly brackets!