What prior knowledge does your student have?

In my experience, what helped me the most when starting to learn how to code was having a motivating problem that I wanted to solve. Why do I care what a for-loop is if I can't see how it is even helpful? Many tutorials have examples when teaching, but I believe that the problem should come first, and act as the glue between the basic ideas that will be introduced. Then, the mentor's most important role is to guide the student through best practices, such as style and performance.