"I discovered that many of my students could not read code, and imagine how it would flow at runtime."
In what language, and what sort of code? I cannot really blame a novice C++ or Java programmer for not being able to see what some snippet of code will do at runtime. Some languages are just less amenable to being run by a human brain than others.
"These same students could write code with loops, but if I gave them code with a loop in it, they wouldn't "see" the runtime behavior"
That is because loops are not very informative about program behavior, except in the simplest cases.
Simple loops in C++, such as computing an average. "Blame" isn't the point. I was very surprised that students could not read the same kind of code they could write, and I spent time teaching them how to do so because of this realization. Had I relied solely on projects, I would not have learned this and adapted my teaching.
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"I discovered that many of my students could not read code, and imagine how it would flow at runtime."
In what language, and what sort of code? I cannot really blame a novice C++ or Java programmer for not being able to see what some snippet of code will do at runtime. Some languages are just less amenable to being run by a human brain than others.
"These same students could write code with loops, but if I gave them code with a loop in it, they wouldn't "see" the runtime behavior"
That is because loops are not very informative about program behavior, except in the simplest cases.
Simple loops in C++, such as computing an average. "Blame" isn't the point. I was very surprised that students could not read the same kind of code they could write, and I spent time teaching them how to do so because of this realization. Had I relied solely on projects, I would not have learned this and adapted my teaching.