I'm a bright person, and I learned to program in 6 months with only "programming" experience being Excel VBA scripts.
Joel's method would have made me drop out and convinced me that programming was terribly boring-- much like a how a kid who wants to play the piano would feel after starting out on 6-months of only scales.
I learned so quickly because I loved it, and I loved it because I could be instantly productive making apps with Ruby on Rails. There was still a lot to learn, but those things could be learned later "in the field" as they were relevant.
I completely agree. My initial foray into programming was writing sites in PHP, and I learned a lot about logic, functions, classes, and structuring projects because of it— and my transition into other languages. Had I said I wanted to learn to program and someone tossed K&R at me and told me to "work through it by sheer force", I doubt I would have found the subject to be so interesting.
Certainly K&R is a must-read, but Joel's advice...
"If you can't get through this sequence, you're not going to be able to program, so you might as well give up now."
...is terrible. There is more than one way to introduce someone to programming.
Joel's method would have made me drop out and convinced me that programming was terribly boring-- much like a how a kid who wants to play the piano would feel after starting out on 6-months of only scales.
I learned so quickly because I loved it, and I loved it because I could be instantly productive making apps with Ruby on Rails. There was still a lot to learn, but those things could be learned later "in the field" as they were relevant.