With the addition of two new tutorials I have compiled my tutorials so far into one resource. More are coming soon and I'll update this topic each time. My goal is to have a list of tutorials that newcomers can be referred to regarding a large majority of common questions. Once this resource is finished I will move onto more complex tutorials which will be compiled into another resource as well.
http://www.byond.com/members/ KyleZX?command=view_post&post=110646
Please post up any suggestions, issues, opinions or requests. I'll reply as soon as I can. Thank you.
ID:266021
 Mar 11 2011, 1:01 am (Edited on Mar 11 2011, 1:24 am)
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Mar 11 2011, 5:15 pm
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Enzuigiri
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Much appreciated. I'm just about done reading the blue book and still finding myself a little lost. I shall be moving onto reading these next.
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Sunday March 13th Update :
--- Custom Spawning & Welcome Message --- Displaying Information --- Basic World Chat | |
Where did the tutorials go? o.o
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Wow, it was only by chance I saw this. Like really, woah. Anyway, as it say "3/11/11" so this is really old. No longer exists. Got totally rubbished by everyone and I don't try to help people who only want something to hate on.
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Haters will be haters, and you can't let yourself lose just because of them. You have to look past that and help the people who honestly care about your tutorials. The rest don't matter.
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Except clearly people were learning without them, otherwise how did you know what to write? =P
I think the question really comes as to whether people would learn better with them than without, and what DivineTraveller is saying is actually they would learn better without them, because of the misnomers that were present. From what I reviewed, I would tend to agree. This is actually not just true of DM, but all languages. I've just had to correct a lot of stuff in a 14,000 line Java project, simply because the developer was new to Java, and their IDE of choice (JCreator) lets you do a lot of non-standard things in order to be "easier to use" or convenient. In the process it goes against common practice in the majority of the Java community. Clearly the IDE was at fault, as it didn't encourage best practice (which is actually really easy to do in Java, particularly if the IDE is supporting you) and aimed at new Java developers in the process. Put simply, the IDE is full of misnomers and is producing Java developers that can't interact with the rest of the industry. The industry will clearly just ignore them, and move on. A shame, as new Java developers obviously can't hope to know that JCreator is doing them such a dis-service. It's hindering, despite the aim to help. Does this reflect badly on the IDE developer? Not as such. Clearly their aim was noble enough, their understanding of just how complex the art of teaching is and why good practice is essential was a little lacking. I say this with no malice, but they shouldn't have been designing an IDE on their own, they needed input and advice from other experienced Java developers, teachers and professors. | |
I'm not sure if I ever saw the tutorials in question, but one good tutorial is better than any number of inferior ones.
The problem with a bad tutorial (or even one that's just less-than-perfect) is that people can get bad ideas from it. Even if a tutorial has just one good point in it, there's no guarantee that everyone will walk away from the tutorial with that one good point. There's a chance the tutorial will confuse them or put wrong ideas in their head. I think it's better to give examples and let people figure things out for themselves. Too many DM tutorials try to explain basic concepts in overwhelming ways (ex: spending five pages explaining what a var is). It's better to give no explanation and just show people how to use vars. This way they'll develop their own understanding of what a var is. | |
I do especially agree with your last point. I get the sensation that we're insulting the intellect of many programmers who are migrating from other languages, and making mountains out of molehills for people new to programming in general.
If you've dedicated such effort to explaining something so simple, it suggests to the reader that there is something more complex going on with it than there actually is. | |
I definitely agree that if someone is doing bad tutorials then that's only going to do bad. However, I don't think good tutorials do anything but good. I admit my tutorials did have a few issues but I fixed them within 24 hours each time. It was actually a learning experience for me too. I feel it was a shame people had trouble accepting them.
Also, I learned using ZBT's tutorial and some youtube tutorials. The rest I taught myself using the F1 key, developer forum and a bit of luck. I found it was a struggle to have to jump that many hoops just to be able to understand the basics and I understand why so many people don't and just end up cruising the Ads section looking for coders. My goal was to create an all in one guide to do virtually whatever code you wanted within reason. | |
Stephen001 wrote:
I do especially agree with your last point. I get the sensation that we're insulting the intellect of many programmers who are migrating from other languages, and making mountains out of molehills for people new to programming in general. I don't understand your last point. Can you explain further? Thanks. | |
Why would you explain how the formulas for velocity (constant acceleration) came about using calculus when you can explain it using algebra and be reasonably sure that everyone will get it.
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Kyle_ZX wrote:
I definitely agree that if someone is doing bad tutorials then that's only going to do bad. However, I don't think good tutorials do anything but good. I admit my tutorials did have a few issues but I fixed them within 24 hours each time. It was actually a learning experience for me too. I feel it was a shame people had trouble accepting them. Again, I'm not sure if I remember your tutorials so I'm not talking specifically about them. Good tutorials don't always do good because they have some bad parts. If they didn't have bad parts they'd be perfect. As long as there's a bad part, there's potential for someone to be confused and walk away with the wrong idea. Often the author assumes (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) that the reader will have the same knowledge they do. They write an explanation they'd find useful themself, but since they already understand the topic their explanation ends up being useful only to people who already understand the topic. Most of the people who read the tutorial won't be complete newbies who might benefit from the tutorial, they'll be people who already understand the topic. They'll say things like "good job!" because they do have the knowledge that the author wrongly assumes the reader to have and the author's behavior is reinforced. My goal was to create an all in one guide to do virtually whatever code you wanted within reason. I'm not sure what you mean by that. DM tutorials just need to teach DM's syntax/quirks and how to use the software. There are two types of people you'd need to educate: first time programmers and experienced programmers who just haven't used Dream Maker before (they understand code and compilation, but don't understand the map, icon, and interface editors). Any more advanced programming topic (object-oriented programming / inheritance) is already covered by a tutorial somewhere else. | |