What we teach in the first week, and why it is not a programming language

People arrive at a course with a language in mind. They want Python, or JavaScript, or whatever a friend told them pays well. That is a reasonable place to start from, and it is not where the first week goes.

The first week is about the machine. Not because syntax is hard, but because almost everybody who gets stuck in month two is stuck on something that was never taught in month one.

Where files actually are

A large number of people who use a computer every day cannot say where a file they saved has gone. It is in Downloads, or it is in the app, or it is on the desktop. That is enough to write a letter. It is not enough to follow an instruction that says open a terminal in the project directory, and that instruction appears on the first page of every guide the student will read for the next two years.

So we start there. A folder is a path. A path is text that can be typed. Downloads is an ordinary folder with an ordinary name. A file extension is part of the name and can be seen if the setting hiding it is turned off, which is the first setting we change on every machine in the room. None of this is exciting and all of it removes a category of problem permanently.

The terminal, early

Not because it looks impressive, but because every tool assumes it. Installing something, starting a project, saving work to version control, putting a site online: all of it happens at a prompt. Six commands cover most of the first month.

pwd                    # which folder am I in
ls                     # what is in it
cd projects/shop-site  # move into one
cd ..                  # move back out
mkdir invoices         # make a folder
cp report.csv backup/  # copy a file into another folder

A student who can move around a machine at a prompt stops being dependent on a particular editor, a particular operating system or a particular tutorial. That independence is most of what a course is buying them.

Reading an error message

The clearest difference between a student who progresses and one who stalls is what they do in the ten seconds after something goes wrong. One reads the message. The other takes a screenshot and waits for help.

So we teach the shape of an error before there is much code to break: what failed, in which file, on which line, and what it expected instead. We break things on purpose and read the output together. Somewhere in the second week the question changes from it is not working to it says it cannot find this file, and I think that is because I renamed the folder. At that point the student can be taught anything.

Version control before frameworks

Git comes in early, in a small way: save a version, look at what changed, go back to yesterday, work on a copy without breaking the thing that works.

The reason is confidence rather than process. A student who knows they can undo anything will try things, and trying things is how the subject is actually learned. A student who is one wrong keystroke away from losing a week of work is careful, and careful is slow.

Then the language, and then a brief

By the time syntax starts, nothing about the environment is in the way, which means the language is the only new thing in the room. That is the point of the order.

From there the work is projects rather than exercises: a brief, a deadline and a review where the code is read out loud and questioned. A tutorial followed to the end teaches typing. A brief with a deadline and somebody who will ask why you did it that way teaches building, which is the thing an employer is paying for.

What it asks of you, in hours

The honest part, because it is the part that decides who finishes. A part-time course is a few evenings a week in class and roughly the same again alone, every week, for the length of the course. The students who do well are not the ones who arrive knowing the most. They are the ones who do the practice between sessions, which is unglamorous advice and remains true.

If you cannot find those hours this quarter, take the course next quarter. Paying for a course you do not have time to attend is the most common way people waste money on training.

Where the courses are

The catalogue, the dates, the fees and enrolment all live on Bitnox Education. Classes run in our Event Space in Abeokuta, which seats sixty and is set out for teaching rather than for sitting in rows behind a projector.

For a team rather than an individual, the shape is different: the sessions are built around the systems you already run and the week you actually have. That side of it is on the technology training page, and if you would like it arranged, tell us what the team does.