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A guy in my Python study group asked why his loop printed 10 instead of 9, and it made me rethink how I learn
We were at the downtown library in Boise, about 7 of us around a table, and this one guy kept getting 10 when he expected 9 from a simple range loop. He stared at it for 20 minutes, then asked out loud instead of just Googling it. I explained that range(10) stops before 10, and he said "oh, so it's like the bus stops one block before my house." That weird bus thing stuck with me more than any tutorial I've read, and now when I'm stuck I try to explain my bug out loud to the room. Does anyone else learn better by talking it through with other people instead of just searching?
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jamiegreen25d ago
So the guy sat there for 20 minutes before asking? That's the real issue, not whether talking beats Googling. If he'd just run `for i in range(10): print(i)` with an extra print inside the loop to watch `i` each pass, he would've seen it hit 9 and stop. Half the time people say they "learn better out loud" they really just mean they waited too long to test the dumb simple thing. The bus thing is cute but it doesn't teach you that range's stop value is always left out, so now he knows one example and not the rule. Talking it out can help, sure, but only after you've poked at it yourself first.
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