HN Explorer

Ask HN: Things New Developers Struggle with Most?

2 points by jjensen90 ↗ HN
Hi HN! I am developing some educational materials based around programming/web development (PHP, Java, language agnostic concepts) and I am wondering what your personal experiences have been regarding the concepts/topics/workflows that are most challenging to new (or even intermediate) developers. These could be struggles you've personally had, or difficulties you've seen while mentoring or pair programming.

I want the curriculum I design to directly solve real problems that developers face, rather than be based on my own single subjective experiences/personal bias. I think aggregating a list of these topics might not only be selfishly beneficial for my project, but might be a good resource for a new programmer who can see what challenges they might face (and more importantly, that those challenges can be overcome!).

2 comments

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solipsism
Building an accurate mental model of a typical web request is important and sometimes tricky. You mention both PHP and Java. I'm not sure how you're planning on teaching both of these, but using each to build a web app has different implications from the other regarding how/when/by what your code gets called. Adding JavaScript makes it even more complex.
jjensen90
Thanks for your answer; that is a great point about the mental model of a web request. I mention PHP and Java because I have experience in web development in both languages, but my training materials would have completely separate tracts for each language.

Essentially I would like to target non-academically trained beginners who want practical/actionable knowledge in the respective language. So my basic outline would be: installing the language, choosing/installing an IDE, setting up a simple web server, language basics, OOP, database interaction, front-end rendering, etc. The reason for this Ask HN is that I would hate to waste extra time on something that 90% of students will grasp immediately, at the expense of a topic that might need extra attention.