When I look to learn a new language (knowing a few already), there are two things that I want to get out of the tutorial. I want to be presented with syntax and

When I look to learn a new language (knowing a few already), there are two things that I want to get out of the tutorial. I want to be presented with syntax and I want to be presented with what constitutes an idiomatic use of the language. If these two points are explained well, I should come away with an idea of the philosophy of the language, as well as tools to avoid common pitfalls. I should also be able to read other people's code in that language. Everything else can be covered by good documentation. When I was learning to program for the first time, however, all that I wanted was a bunch of short programs that I could type in and make small changes to. It's hard to learn about a language's philosophy when you're spending so much time hunting for missing punctuation. At that point, you're just hoping that your program is going to do something. With this in mind, I think there's a lot of room for improvement in both camps.