The article states "A small amount of programming concepts had to be taught at the start and some single-concept examples are given, but the chapter always centers around a complete game."
But besides, getting to the point of premature successes:
In a way, you need a premature sense of accomplishment to keep a person motivated. Plus, if they ever come across the difficult portions of programming, that motivation might get them to go through the difficulty.
To me, the difficulty in programming is solving a problem using a lot of the difference concepts that make it up, but that's true with any profession and you can't get those concepts in your head unless you learn it one at a time.
What I don't want to see anymore is programming instructors teaching students a lot of concepts at the same time because to them that's the difficult way they learned and the "right" way to learn. That's just not a proper way to learn, you need to teach one concept at a time and if that means premature sense of accomplishment, so be it in the short term.
But besides, getting to the point of premature successes:
In a way, you need a premature sense of accomplishment to keep a person motivated. Plus, if they ever come across the difficult portions of programming, that motivation might get them to go through the difficulty.
To me, the difficulty in programming is solving a problem using a lot of the difference concepts that make it up, but that's true with any profession and you can't get those concepts in your head unless you learn it one at a time.
What I don't want to see anymore is programming instructors teaching students a lot of concepts at the same time because to them that's the difficult way they learned and the "right" way to learn. That's just not a proper way to learn, you need to teach one concept at a time and if that means premature sense of accomplishment, so be it in the short term.