How to teach your Girlfriend programming

Before we begin, there are a few things that must be kept in mind.


You are not somehow more intelligent

You may be able to judge the exact size of spanner required for any given nut. You may be able to change the oil in your car blindfolded with one hand tied behind your back. Neither of those make you smarter than someone else, even if they think the best way to remove a nut is with a fork. What you need to keep in mind is that you probably don't have a clue what the different types of pedicure or possibly even what a pedicure is.

So when you explain to them what an object is and they seem confused, remember that they think differently to you. Try to explain it in a different way, this will be easier to do with practice and knowing the person well will help you in this.

You know more than her

You know what an "object" is, you know why an error on line 24 may mean you forgot a semi-colon on line 23. You may not however know the difference between two pairs of apparently identical shoes. You know more than your girlfriend about whatever you are teaching, but not about everything.

Try not to skip over things that you take for granted, it may be obvious to you what curly braces, semi-colons and doctypes. By all means don't go too far in the other direction and patronise her. When you skip over such a thing (as you near undoubtedly will), apologise and explain it.

She types, not you

Yes you can type 31.4 words per minute with your nose and 200 normally, you can also lift some really manly weights. Your girlfriend... can't. You tell her to type in a simple little bit of stuff and it takes here AGES! But how will she get faster? Well, how did you get faster? You typed a lot and thus it stands to reason that given time she will also type faster.

But there's more to it than that. Giving her 100% control of the computer allows her to know that it is not you achieving results but her. I know that when there's some small thing and you just want it done quickly it's so easy to "borrow" the keyboard for just a second. Do not. It will send a message that she cannot do something, much better to let her know that she can do anything you can, even if she needs a little instruction at the moment.