Does anyone have a recommendation for a good, up to date, open source, introduction to programming? Ideally something that uses an experienced programmer (i.e. me) to guide.
The first half of the course is mostly in C and then switches to Python, and I really think it is a very well designed course that get students doing some interesting stuff very quickly while building a solid foundation for future learning. There is an online version of the course and students can watch all of the videos and lectures. I believe there is also a teacher training program for the curriculum.
I was surprised when my son came home and started asking me questions about malloc and free, but he has learned a lot in a very short period of time.
At this point I think it's probably a matter of "you either have it, or you don't". All of the people who succeeded "already knew" how to program, before I even showed them, or they never managed to learn.
And my experience is even with people who actually did manage to secure a programming job. In my opinion they still don't know the basics - they blindly follow "procedures" and mostly do copy/paste programming, without being able to grok the idea and why these things work the way they do..
Likewise, getting into intimate discussions on file encoding or strings in memory just isn't going to be retained by someone whose major interaction with a computer is facebook.
Focus on practical tasks, but take time to explain what code is doing in plain english. If you've done rubber duck debugging, you're aiming for that level of simplicity in your explanation. Avoid technical words, use simple metaphors and generally avoid the history lessons. Once you establish a baseline of skill in the developing programmer, swap the roles - have them explain their code to you.
"yeah, that's a lot of copy and pasting isn't it? Want a neat trick to save yourself some effort?"