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I disagree. Early mentioning "associative arrays" is a problem? I don't think so. Even if reader don't know what they are, he can learn from wikipedia or somewh
by krollew 14y ago
I disagree. Early mentioning "associative arrays" is a problem? I don't think so. Even if reader don't know what they are, he can learn from wikipedia or somewhere else. Why write so many times about basics? Googling is so hard? Sory, I think it's most basic programmer skill - to find information he need.
The same with everything nil and another novice caring stuff. This book is good (I know since I learnt from it), if authors cared about so-novice-people this book would suck so much. Imagine you want use lua for your C program, whant to learn it first and you read what associative array is. I'd be mad.
And I disagree with your point about "practical" examples. Practical stuff you learn at work. Examples are good to learn syntax and general stuff, rest you can find quickly in documentation.
On the other hand, programming tutorials needs rethinking, but I think it need far deeper change.
- andrewflnr 14y agoThere will be plenty of time for the new programmer to get their google-fu from reading other people's crappy documentation. As a writer, though, it's your job to make your piece as useful as possible for your intended audience. This means practical examples, because that's often the best way to learn in this type of scenario. The point about PiL is not that it's a bad book, it's that it's a bad introduction for a non-programmer. PiL was extremely useful to me when I already knew C++ and Python, but I can also see that if it had been my first programming resource I would have been in trouble.