how to write a tutorial
Brian van den Broek
bvande at po-box.mcgill.ca
Wed Jan 26 14:53:04 EST 2005
Terry Reedy said unto the world upon 2005-01-26 14:08:
> Xah the arrogant wrote, among other things,
<SNIP>
> However, there are several errors in the above that would mislead a Python
> learner. I advise any such to ignore Xah's writings.
>
> Terry J. Reedy
Hi all,
here's a thought:
There isn't any doubt that these 'tutorials' are generally unwelcome
and unhelpful. Numerous people have kindly taken the time to flag some
of the problems. So much so that any competent google of the archives
would quickly reveal the group consensus on their instructional merit.
I submit that continued corrections and advice of this sort are
counter-productive. I understand the good intentions behind the
corrections. (Indeed, my own level of Python-fu is such that it is
possible that I might have been mislead the 'tutorials' without these
corrections; I thus appreciate the correctors' efforts.) But, such
corrections are troll-food and make it unlikely that the 'game' of
posting such tutorials will soon loose its magical power to amuse the
OP. They all but ensure that there will be more such 'tutorials' to
correct.
Could we try to ignore them in the hopes that without the light of
attention they will wither, meanwhile trusting the many extant reviews
and google to do their work?
(In case it isn't obvious: none of this is intended as a criticism of
Terry or any of the others who have been 'fighting the good fight'; I
just think a change of strategy might be in order.)
Best to all
Brian vdB
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