Coding as Literacy: Why You Don’t Have to Be a Programmer to Think Like One

Table of Contents

• The Logic That Rules Everything
• The Four Core Thinking Patterns
• Where People Get Stuck
• Computational Thinking Implementation

The Logic That Rules Everything

• Breaking complex problems into smaller, manageable pieces (decomposition)
• Recognizing patterns and reusing solutions across different contexts
• Systematic debugging: hypothesis, test, iterate until you find the root cause
• If-then thinking: decision trees and conditional logic for daily choices

The Four Core Thinking Patterns

• Decomposition: Large problems are just collections of smaller, solvable problems
• Pattern Recognition: Look for similarities, reuse solutions, build templates
• Abstraction: Focus on what matters, ignore irrelevant details
• Algorithms: Step-by-step processes that consistently produce results

Where People Get Stuck

• Random Problem-Solving: Guessing solutions instead of systematic investigation
• Reinventing Everything: Not recognizing when similar problems have known solutions
• Binary Thinking: Missing the if-then logic that drives most decisions
• Process Blindness: Not documenting successful approaches for future reuse

Computational Thinking Implementation

Debug Life Problems: When something’s broken, form hypotheses and test systematically DRY Principle: Don’t Repeat Yourself—create templates for recurring tasks Automate the Routine: Identify repetitive tasks and systematize them Document Your Algorithms: Write down step-by-step processes that work

Resources: Computational Thinking by Jeannette Wing for foundational concepts. The Art of Problem Solving by Richard Rusczyk for systematic approaches. Khan Academy’s computer science courses for hands-on practice.