3 ms·

I have seen this phenomenon so often in explanations/tutorials of different things. People seem to not have a concrete target audience in mind. They simply writ

I have seen this phenomenon so often in explanations/tutorials of different things. People seem to not have a concrete target audience in mind. They simply write of cuff.

kerkeslager 7y ago
I'll go one step further: for many slightly-obscure technical topics, the intermediate writing between beginner and advanced is rare or simply doesn't exist. I struggled with this when I was trying to learn functional programming--writing on the subject is mostly linked-lists/lambda/map/reduce/filter, or όλα είναι ελληνικά για μένα. This goes even for better writers who do have an audience in mind: their audience is either complete beginners, or people with advanced academic degrees in the field. It took me years to find writings that bridge that gap.
- nanomonkey 7y ago
  What material did you find? I too have noticed this gap and been searching.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    I found a lot of the stuff on Matt Might's blog helpful. He writes a bit about compiling Scheme to C, which allows me to see what each piece of Scheme is doing in a language I know.[1] Following this approach, I found LISP In Small Pieces[2], Compiling With Continuations[3], etc. There's more but I have to dig it up. [1] http://matt.might.net/articles/programming-with-continuations--exceptions-backtracking-search-threads-generators-coroutines/ http://matt.might.net/articles/programming-with-continuation... [2] https://pages.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiSP.html https://pages.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiSP.html [3] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/compiling-with-continuations/7CA9C36DCE78AD82218E745F43A4E740 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/compiling-with-continua...
- artificialLimbs 7y ago
  This X 1000. I tried learning programming several times in my younger life, maybe 3 or 4 efforts at getting some 'basics'. Never thought I would be able to program until I picked up Unity on a whim and started learning C#. Lo and behold, documentation is now plentiful and tutorials are a vast landscape. Nearly every 'beginner' lesson or tutorial or book on programming that I have seen state in the beginning that 'some programming experience recommended.'

I have seen this phenomenon so often in explanations/tutorials of different things. People seem to not have a concrete target audience in mind. They simply write of cuff.

kerkeslager 7y ago

I'll go one step further: for many slightly-obscure technical topics, the intermediate writing between beginner and advanced is rare or simply doesn't exist. I struggled with this when I was trying to learn functional programming--writing on the subject is mostly linked-lists/lambda/map/reduce/filter, or όλα είναι ελληνικά για μένα. This goes even for better writers who do have an audience in mind: their audience is either complete beginners, or people with advanced academic degrees in the field. It took me years to find writings that bridge that gap.

nanomonkey 7y ago
What material did you find? I too have noticed this gap and been searching.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  I found a lot of the stuff on Matt Might's blog helpful. He writes a bit about compiling Scheme to C, which allows me to see what each piece of Scheme is doing in a language I know.[1] Following this approach, I found LISP In Small Pieces[2], Compiling With Continuations[3], etc. There's more but I have to dig it up. [1] http://matt.might.net/articles/programming-with-continuations--exceptions-backtracking-search-threads-generators-coroutines/ http://matt.might.net/articles/programming-with-continuation... [2] https://pages.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiSP.html https://pages.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiSP.html [3] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/compiling-with-continuations/7CA9C36DCE78AD82218E745F43A4E740 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/compiling-with-continua...
artificialLimbs 7y ago
This X 1000. I tried learning programming several times in my younger life, maybe 3 or 4 efforts at getting some 'basics'. Never thought I would be able to program until I picked up Unity on a whim and started learning C#. Lo and behold, documentation is now plentiful and tutorials are a vast landscape. Nearly every 'beginner' lesson or tutorial or book on programming that I have seen state in the beginning that 'some programming experience recommended.'