Learning to Code

I know folks who struggle with the core concepts of writing software.

Some of them are IT professionals. With jobs. They can't really code. It seems like they don't understand it.

Maybe a gentler introduction to programming will help?

I have my doubts. The folks who seem to struggle the hardest are really fighting against their own assumptions. They seem to make stuff up and then seek confirmation in everything they do. The idea of a falsifiable experiment seems to be utterly unknown to them. Also, because they're driven by their assumptions, the idea of exhaustively enumerating alternatives isn't something they do well, either.

For example, if you try to explain python's use of " or ' for string literals -- a syntax not used by a language like SQL -- they will argue that Python is "wrong" based on their knowledge of SQL. Somehow they wind up with a laser-like focus on mapping Python to SQL. They'll argue that apostrophe's are standard, and they'll always use those. Problem solved, right?

Or is it problem ignored? Or problem refused?

And. Why the laser-like focus on mapping among programming languages? It seems that they're missing the core concept of abstract semantics mapped to specific syntax.