I learned to code without understanding first, and then came to understand later. I don't know if that's good or bad pedagogy in general, but it worked for me. Maybe a few more people can chime in; the plural of anecdote is data.

I'm totally fine with both approaches, but I want to highlight two things the article mentioned:

1) budget concerns for monitors, computers, keyboards 2) students cant type

I think I could teach an array traversal using skittles, and I could teach binary search using a physical english dictionary.

One would be surprised how much of coding is trying to understand the logic of what is trying to be done. The api call can come after

It definitely helped me start to understand sorting algorithms when I tried using skittles and other physical objects I could just move around. Before that it just looked like a magic loop that worked somehow, but afterward I had an idea of what the computer was doing in each step.

Really, all algorithms are better when demonstrated on sweet treats. :)

bonus if you get to eat them!

I think computer science can be taught very well without a computer. I'm more divided on if it's true of coding.