Don’t Teach Coding: Until You Read This Book

Coding education raises bigger questions than which programming language to start with. In Don’t Teach Coding: Until You Read This Book, Lindsey D. Handley and Stephen R. Foster explore what coding is, why it matters, and how ideas from language, mathematics, history, and learning science can help us think more clearly about teaching it.

Organized into four sections—“Prologues,” “Beginnings,” “Middles,” and “Ends”—the book builds its discussion through themes such as syntax, semantics, algorithms, computational machines, and the ways people learn. Rather than treating coding as a narrow technical skill, it examines the subject as part of a broader educational conversation.

Look beyond the code

The authors connect programming with familiar ideas about language and meaning, then consider how algorithms and formal systems shape what computers can do. This wider view offers readers a way to think about coding not just as writing instructions, but as a meeting point between human thought and machine processes.

Teaching, learning, and practice

Later sections turn toward learning science and education, including mindset, metacognition, deliberate practice, second-language acquisition, fluency, and expertise. These topics frame questions about how coding is learned and taught, and what educators might take from other fields of learning.

A book for educators and curious readers

The contents make this a thoughtful choice for teachers, parents, and others interested in computer science education. Readers looking for an interdisciplinary discussion of programming—one that makes room for history, language, and the science of learning—will find plenty to consider.

Explore the ideas at your own pace

With chapters that move from foundational concepts toward teaching and educational questions, Don’t Teach Coding invites readers to reconsider familiar assumptions about who can learn to code and how the subject belongs in education.