3 ms·
It's great that there's loads of tutorials out there on most topics. it's not so good that so many of them are crap, or straight up wrong. > it is your respons
by oldcynic 8y ago
It's great that there's loads of tutorials out there on most topics. it's not so good that so many of them are crap, or straight up wrong.
> it is your responsibility as a learner to decide if something makes sense or not
I disagree. It's on the teacher to explain clearly and accurately. If you can't meet that low bar don't pollute the net. The beginner is usually unable to decide which piece of conflicting advice or misinformation is correct.
For a great example of this see the php reference and the dozens of conflicting comments and recommendations on each language feature. A beginner has none of the nuance needed to decide which are helpful and which are misunderstandings. Or w3schools for an endless litany of poor and partial explanations.
> experts are far detached from the beginner's mindset and often lack the ability to explain something in simple terms
Again that's on the teacher and it need not be the case that an expert is detached (Though some can be). Explaining in simple lay terms is a different skill that is entirely unrelated to expertise of a subject.
You don't need to be expert to write a beginners tutorial, but you really should have the foundation firmly fixed (and validated by others or use) and reasonable ability to write clearly.
Until then writing a "my experience learning x" blog is a far better service to the internet. Save the tutorials a month or two more for when you have enough grasp to be helping rather than hindering.
- amorphous 8y agoI'm not saying it's fine to create low quality on purpose, obviously, any writer should aim to create the best content possible. The problem I have is the reasoning that just because someone is a beginner there's no value in publishing his or her stuff. Any real effort has value. The more the better. It's new material that others can build upon. For example, it's a great opportunity for curators digging out the good stuff for others (I partly do this). Besides, when does someone become "expert enough" to be sufficiently useful to publish? Who decides that? The other problem with the argument "please don't publish, you are spoiling my search engine" is that it is not realistic at all. Everyone writes now. That's why we all need critical thinking and ask "why" and "does this make sense". A writer shouldn't pretend to be an "expert" or make false claims but this does not mean it is realistic to demand this (and I'm not even starting to talk about fake news etc)