Teaching: General case first or special cases first?

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A common dilemma while teaching (I’m not only talking about teaching in a school or university; talks and workshops are also teaching), is whether it’s better to first teach some easy special cases and then generalize, or first the general case and then present special cases as merely shortcuts.

I’ve been revisiting this dilemma recently, while preparing the slides for my upcoming regular expressions talks. For example: Regex quantifiers.

1. General rule first, shortcuts after

You can use {m,n} to control how many times the preceding group can repeat (m = minimum, n = maximum). If you omit n (like {m,}) it’s implied to be infinity (=“at least m times”, with no upper bound).

Advantages & disadvantages of this approach

2. Special cases first, general rule after

Advantages & disadvantages of this approach

What usually happens

In most cases, educators seem to favor the second approach. In the example of regex quantifiers, pretty much every regex book or talk explains the shortcuts first and the general rule afterwards. In other disciplines, such as Mathematics, I think both approaches are used just as often.

What do you think? Which approach do you find easier to understand? Which approach do you usually employ while teaching?