Warning: my friend's kid tried to learn Python from a TikTok series

I was over at my friend's place in Tacoma last month, and her 14-year-old was showing me his code. He said he'd been learning from these 60-second 'Learn to Code' videos for about three weeks. The code was a mess of half-finished ideas with no structure. He looked at me and said, 'I don't get why it won't run, the video made it look easy.' It really showed me how short-form content can skip the basic, boring steps that actually build understanding. Has anyone else seen a beginner get tripped up by learning from the wrong kind of source?

3 comments

3 Comments

ryanburns1mo ago

My cousin in Boise tried to learn guitar from Instagram reels. After a month, she could play three cool riffs but couldn't switch chords or keep a basic rhythm. She got really frustrated because the videos never showed the slow, repetitive practice you actually need.

bettys511mo ago

Three cool riffs in a month sounds amazing, @ryanburns, but wow that must be so annoying to not get the basics shown! No wonder she got frustrated.

rowan72524d ago

and i read this thing from a computer science professor a few weeks back. he said the same thing about short form coding tutorials. they focus on the flashy end result not the boring grunt work. like the kid probably saw someone build a simple game in 60 seconds. but that person already knew how to structure loops and handle errors. the video skipped all that. it's like giving someone a map without explaining how to read it. they end up lost and frustrated.