{"id":107,"date":"2017-11-28T17:39:45","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T17:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/mythbusting-coding-has-nothing-to-do-with-memorization\/"},"modified":"2022-10-13T20:50:17","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T20:50:17","slug":"mythbusting-coding-has-nothing-to-do-with-memorization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/mythbusting-coding-has-nothing-to-do-with-memorization\/","title":{"rendered":"Mythbusting &#8211; Coding has nothing to do with memorization"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/CoderSchool050617-29.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-10820 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Screen-Shot-2020-10-06-at-10.17.35-PM-300x287.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"287\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Screen-Shot-2020-10-06-at-10.17.35-PM-300x287.png 300w, https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Screen-Shot-2020-10-06-at-10.17.35-PM-450x430.png 450w, https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Screen-Shot-2020-10-06-at-10.17.35-PM.png 578w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When you&#8217;re studying to become a doctor, you have to memorize a lot &#8211; bones, symptoms, medications, you name it. \u00a0When you&#8217;re studying law, it&#8217;s the same thing, legal precedents, past cases, and what all those latin words mean!<\/p>\n<p>But what happens when you&#8217;re a coder? \u00a0Despite what many think, you <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ilovecoding.org\/you-dont-have-to-memorize-everything-when-it-comes-to-programming\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">memorize very little<\/a>. \u00a0There&#8217;s a bit of a myth out there that learning to code is about learning the words of a language, that as a coder you need remember what all the commands do.<\/p>\n<p>How many kids have told me &#8220;I&#8217;ve memorized every command in Scratch, so I know the language&#8221;. \u00a0News flash &#8211; you don&#8217;t! \u00a0I remember I was teaching a high schooler Java, and at the moment I forgot the command to print some text. \u00a0Flabbergasted, my student said &#8220;You don&#8217;t know system.out.println? \u00a0I thought you knew how to code!!&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Ah, kids, right? \u00a0The fact is that coding isn&#8217;t about knowing the commands &#8211; it&#8217;s about the ability to think through the logic and recognizing (and re-using) patterns of logic. \u00a0It&#8217;s about <em><strong>how to put the commands together<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Sure, I didn&#8217;t remember the command to print something in Java, but I sure knew how to put the rest of the program together, and I found out what the command was 2 seconds later through my buddy Google. \u00a0And thusly, I saved face with that student! \u00a0=).<\/p>\n<p>The moral of the story here, the commands themselves are actually unimportant, mostly because they can be found on the internet&#8230; \u00a0But also because while coding languages have their own syntax of commands, the underlying logic of how the commands interact is the same in any language.\u00a0 THAT is what makes a good coder &#8211; the logic. \u00a0Even back in my day before the world of internet I wouldn&#8217;t remember my commands, and just use my reference books and sheets (granted, I did remember more commands because hey, it&#8217;s not easy using reference books!).<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s exactly why at theCoderSchool, we&#8217;re language-agnostic and really believe that a language is a tool to learn what&#8217;s most important &#8211; the logical thinking skills, applicable to any language, and any career.<\/p>\n<p>Myth busted!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you remember every word in the Spanish dictionary, does that mean you can speak Spanish? &nbsp;Coding is the same way &#8211; it&#8217;s not about memorizing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coder-blog","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12195,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/12195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}