How to learn Chinese and Japanese by Victor Mair.
From the post:
Victor concludes after a discussion of various authorities and sources:
If you delay introducing the characters, students’ mastery of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and so forth, are all faster and more secure. Surprisingly, when later on they do start to study the characters (ideally in combination with large amounts of reading interesting texts with phonetic annotation), students acquire mastery of written Chinese much more quickly and painlessly than if writing is introduced at the same time as the spoken language.
An interesting debate follows in the comments.
I am wondering if the current emphasis on “coding” would be better shift to an emphasis on computing?
That is teaching the fundamental concepts of computing, separate and apart from any particular coding language or practice.
Much as I have taught the principles of subject identification separate and apart from a particular model or syntax.
The nooks and crannies of particular models or syntaxes can weight until later.