I had a LinkedIn post that went mini-viral recently and I got so much satisfaction from scrolling on from some replies without getting angry or frustrated…

The single-most important change I’ve made to how I interact with social media is to learn the superpower of ignoring idiots. I used to reply to them with a reasoned response. But, by definition, they don’t reason. Now I don’t reply, I don’t engage. Bliss

Magic!

But now that AI tools deal with the ‘how’ quite well, our task as programmers is changing. The ‘why’ is essential if we want to guide the AI and verify and approve its output

So when you see some code "you'd do differently", think about who's the intended audience. Maybe, that's the right code for them!

/

This didactic approach happens in all aspects of teaching. Virtually all material children learn at primary school is simplified and "not how I'd do it". A lot of what they learn in secondary school is, too. And there's a reason for that. You need to learn to walk before you can run…

/4

Because I'm not teaching them how to find words in a text.

I'm teaching them how to code,
how to think with a programming mindset,
how to master the basic tools.

/3

[With `Counter` being the most common response]

But I use this code in my beginners' book and in beginners' courses I teach

Why?

/2

Python gives us all the tools to fine-tune behaviour as we please (more or less)!

Indeed, frozen dataclasses and enums aren’t too far from each other, after all. Python always offers plenty of solutions for us to choose from!