[Edu-sig] Re: Edu-sig digest, Vol 1 #721 - 8 msgs

[Arthur]

Jason writes -

>But Art's comment along the lines of 'you don't need tutorials, just
>experience and other people's source' - simply does not acknowledge the
>overwhelming aspects at some stages in one's development. Python has an
>abundance of riches. But sometimes gently learning a core technique or how
>to a do a small simple task is obscured.

Maybe I was being a little too poetic myself.

The specific advice I gave and give was to work within the structure that
Lee Harr's book provides, and to use it in exactly the way that Lee
recommends.

My point about the tutorial already being there was - a message board is a
complex piece of software.  And if one waits until someone should write the
perfect tutorial for writing message board software, one will probably just
be waiting.  If you break down the task, or knowledgebase - and attack it
bit by bit, by finding the right tutorial or source to explore for each bit,
one can start to make progress.  And keep moving forward.

Attempting to swallow a piece of message board software whole - I think we
are agreeing - is too big of a meal.

And I am being serious in thinking about whether the skills involved in
learning how to attack a problem like this - let's assume the message board
tutorial, as a stand-alone piece of work does not exist - is something that
can be tutorialized.

Why do you find things on the web that I don't?  I am sure we are using the
same tools.  You seem to have a more  intuitive sense of how to search. Is
that something you could teach? Probably, to some degree.

I think I am a fairly skilled brain picker. Some learned skill, and some
intuitive sense of how to break down a problem into its constituent parts,
and go at them one at a time, finding resources that I have the
prerequisites to understand, or taking a step back and at least
understanding what prerequisite I am missing, and making the turn to fill
that prerequisite.

Is it something I can try to communicate as a tutorial?  Not sure.

Art