Re: Is Euphoria ever going to be newbie-friendly?
- Posted by GreenEuphorian Jul 25, 2015
- 3036 views
Thanks Derek for the truly *excellent* post, which was a pleasure to read, and for the encouragement that it contains.
After considering the matter with more attention, especially in the light of the replies in this thread, I have come to the conclusion that the problem I am facing actually boils down to two main factors:
1) scarcity of learning/reference materials geared for intermediate learners
2) lack of a lively beginner/intermediate-level user community
As for the first point, as already hinted to in the original post, what we (intermediate learners) most direly need is some tutorial that goes beyond the basics, providing real examples from mid-sized programs. Derek, you were asking me to be specific. Well, for starters I think that the various Python cookbooks could provide a useful source of inspiration here. In addition to those, a detailed case study of a real program would be most appreciated, possibly with a commentary that shows not only how the program works "as it is", but how it was designed and built in the first place. In an earlier post I was suggesting that Wee could serve well this purpose, if someone took the pains of commenting it and producing some sort of tutorial showing how it was designed and constructed from scratch. In short, it would be immensely useful if the experienced programmers who make up the bulk of the Euphoria community, or at least the developers' team, helped the learners by teaching them how to go about constructing non-trivial programs. This is something different (more advanced) from explaining the language commands, structures, etc. as in the manual. And it is also different from providing sample algorithms as in the Rosetta Code archive.
As for the second point, I find that the lack of a lively user community is a significant deterrent, because the learner does not feel so much motivated (although I must admit that the help in the forum is always satisfactory and quick in coming).
Once again, thanks all for the useful replies in this thread.
Edit: see here the suggestion to use Wee as case study http://openeuphoria.org/forum/128317.wc?last_id=128324
