Watched a kid debug his first Python script at a library in Boise and changed my mind about teaching
I used to think beginners should just memorize syntax before writing anything real. Then I sat in on a free coding meetup at the Boise library, where a 12 year old spent 40 minutes stuck on a missing colon in his guessing game. A retired teacher next to him kept saying "run it again and read the error out loud," and the kid fixed it himself without any hints. That moment made me realize that struggling with a tiny error teaches more than copying perfect code ever could. Now I want to know, do you let beginners break their own code on purpose, or do you step in right away?