The long and detailed explanation was doomed from the start. I once saw a coding instructor launch into a long explanation about loops and iterating over arrays, without first considering that the student had never used the word ‘iterate’ in that context before. There is a huge amount of vocabulary specific to coding that we use every day and that probably sounds completely alien to beginners, especially if they aren’t from a scientific background. I can put to use the insights that both experiences gave me, and share some of the mistakes that I find it easy to make when teaching someone to code. Now, two years later, I am back as an instructor in the course. Learning in an environment like CFG - and in my current workplace, at Beamery - made a huge difference in my own growth as a developer. My course at CFG changed that, and was a big driver in my decision to become a software engineer. I took their web development course in my final year of university up until then, I hadn’t had a particularly positive introduction to coding. It’s a fantastic company with a valuable mission, and they’ve just reached the incredible milestone of teaching over 20,000 women to code for free. Last March, I started teaching with Code First: Girls, an organisation dedicated to tackling the gender gap in tech.
