Quote Originally Posted by pitfiend View Post
What I found disturbing, is the lack of hacking (in the good sense of wanting to know more and experimenting new stuff). They see computers as a black boxes with an OS where you double click an icon and start a program. There's nothing under the OS hood, that motivated the need for understanding, to pursuit the never ending quest for knowledge. They are something we can call key strokers, dumb as rocks, repeating the same patterns they learn, without knowing or understanding why it works or not. They barely know about algorithms and see them as arcane formulaes, wrote by some obscure wizard, who's name is lost in the night of times.
QFT. There isn't better way to explain it as you have. I also find it particularly disturbing that new "development trends" focus on simply finding some combination that solves the problem without understanding the solution.

For some reason this has become a popular approach in education sector where little effort is applied to teach students to understand how the world works (starting from basic sciences such as math and physics, then computer hardware and only then computer software and development), instead they are typically taught about what is thought to be "popular" such as Java for programming and some Adobe products for drawing; the rest is focused on business side. What you get are students who know how to count money (which they won't have), limited if any programming skills in Java, web development using Front Page and graphics design in Illustrator. This "professional" profile fits 80% of popular short-term jobs that are low paid and have tight competition to get into.

Quote Originally Posted by pitfiend View Post
In my opinion, if you want to start something great like teaching good foundations for new programmers, bring them that motivation in the first place, inspire them. Then teach them some "magic" about programming science, also teach them to set reachable goals and teamwork.
I agree that the motivation is the most important factor so new developers need to have passion about learning how stuff works and love to figure out what's "behind the scenes".

Although, having said the above, I don't share the opinion that you need to learn assembly first. This could be a typical scenario many years ago and how many of us learned, but today with mobile devices there are cases where you could have no access to assembly and/or machine code at all. However, the passion is what's important and this is why I respect Deathshadow for doing this project. It is a pity that there are very few new projects like this lately - previously we had a lot of new development tools, libraries and frameworks coming out but now only few die hards are left.