Digital competencies are important in today's schools. This can mean practical programming skills as well as more conceptual thinking tool developed within the discipline of computer science. Central to my research interests is the specific situation when students encounter programming for the first time. The complex dependencies between practice and theory in the computer lab are analyzed from a pragmatic perspective. My focus is on actions and the situational thinking while doing programming, that is, 'practical thinking'. This situation is being researched both in naturalistic and controlled settings. A pair-programming setting highlights both the interaction with the programming language, the software, and with the Computer Science tradition. One preliminary finding is the importance of resources directed to the problem at hand, including the importance of timing-which could be framed in terms of the Deweyan concept of inquiry.