Tutorial creates confusion about slices

[Antoon Pardon]

On 2007-04-24, sjdevnull at yahoo.com <sjdevnull at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Antoon Pardon wrote:
>> On 2007-04-24, Michael Bentley <michael at jedimindworks.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > On Apr 24, 2007, at 6:35 AM, Antoon Pardon wrote:
>> >
>> >> People don't read tutorials in a strictly linear fashion. They can
>> >> continue to later subjects and then come back here to see how things
>> >> tie together. So the fact that it is only confusing to those who
>> >> know more than is already presented doesn't seem a very good reason
>> >> to leave it in.
>> >
>> > Yet they understand that earlier in the document, there is likely to
>> > be a less complete coverage of a given topic.  There is in fact, a
>> > link on that page that includes a more complete coverage of that
>> > topic (which I mentioned to you in an earlier message IIRC).
>>
>> That there is more complete coverage elsewhere is no good reason
>> to come with an explanation that suggests things working in
>> a way that will be contradicted by that more complete coverage.
>
> I happen to agree with you, but that's not a completely non-
> controversial position.  Many tutorials/manuals will prevent a
> simplified (and incorrect for the general case) description of how
> something works early on, and then clarify it later for the general
> case.  Personally I'd usually rather have the complete description
> earlier rather than an incorrect simplification, or at least have a
> footnote to the effect of "this is a simple introduction, the full
> behavior will be described later".
>
> But there's a good argument to be made for omitting confounding
> details early on in a tutorial if there's a pedogogical reason for
> doing so--indeed, there's such a widespread belief that early
> oversimplification is actually helpful that I'd guess the majority of
> language tutorials engage in it to some degree.

Thank you for bringing this up so explicitly. I must confess this
point hadn't entered my mind but it is worth thinking about. I'll
see if I can come up with a new proposal bearing this in mind.

Thank you.

-- 
Antoon Pardon