Re: The tutorial
>Once again I must stress not everyone can learn in that fashion. RDS has
>written an excellent manual, but it does not explain what a variable is for
>example, or a byte, or how memory works. Those concepts are important in
>order to use the library routines. Also, I've never considered trying to
>reach the beginner a "wrong" perspective. In fact, I've always felt that
the
>teaching of programming should include the general public and not just the
>hardcore programming clique. There's always a first time for everyone. If
>that were not the case, those yellow "Big Dummy's Guide
>To"...whatever...would not be so successful. Even a language like C,
usually
>the domain of the experienced programmer, is now covered for the newcomer,
>even though there are reference manuals for the C language right beside
>those books.
Thats my whole point! It is why, i stress the fact that we should *not*
explain all tricks of Euphoria (yet anyway).
Rather than redoing the documentation, and explain all stuff euphoria can
do, teach them what programming in general is about: (thus: what a variably
is, how memory works, *those* things) If they know that RDS documentation is
great for looking things up. My point is like the documentation, the
techniques of programming are not so hardware and/or OS related. In the end
it all comes down onto designing an algorithm. And I do want to cover Win32
api, and such specific things. But the win32 should not be 'taught'. The
audiance should receive that 'perspective' they need, to understand a
technical document. And we should include such technical documents. We
should *not* (IMHO) convert the win32 api into something very beginner
friendly, but useless thing. They alreadt did this with GUI's: Windows 95
and whee what a perfect choice it was. (financially maybe 
>Your idea of presenting the tutorial as a story I do like. It makes the
>learning process interesting. We would have to make the story so that it
>does not come across as corny. The target audience age must be defined
>clearly for the story to be successful without coming across as immature or
>too sophisticated.
Well, story is a big word. Some character that introduces itself once.
And has a 10 to 15 line 'event' where something happens, (some question pops
up), afterwhich it is applied upon *real* programming, and ends with a lot
of example code, terminology listing of words already used so much they
should be familiar by now, and some strict definitions for the terminology.
And for each trivial programming technique we teach, such a short event
story (with hopefully many funny remarks: we need some one extremely funny..
I cant even make a clown smile ;-( ) I want to each general concepts.
Esspecially for those with no or little programming experience.
No offense to anyone, but there is no such thing, as a programming that
needs more than RDS gives us. We should just teach beginners to become
programmers. Im not saying some one is or is not a programmer. I just mean,
if RDS documentation isnt enough, we need to teach 'theory' (what
programming is about) rather than 'implementation' (which routines, etc.)
The guide I want to write, should be useless to any real software engineer.
Why ? Because they need nothing more than RDS' documenation)
Ralf
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