When I was in school, I had a difficult time getting into programming because of a catch-22 in the learning process:

1. I didn't know how to write anything because I didn't know what keywords and commands meant. For example (as a student, I would think), "what does this using namespace std; thing do anyway?
2. I didn't know what keywords and commands meant because I hadn't written anything.

This basically led me to spending countless long night cursing the compiler as I made minor tweaks to my assignments until they would compile (and hopefully perform whatever operation they were supposed to).

Is there a teaching/learning method that anyone uses that gets around this catch-22?

I am trying to make this non-argumentative, which is why I don't want to know the 'best' method, but rather which methods exist.