[Events] "just hacking around" vs "software engineering" tutorials

[Shauna Gordon-McKeon]

*2) we need to give the hobbyist crowd explanations that help
themunderstand what they can skip*

I think this is key.  It's hard to create materials that will be good for
all learners.  Providing metadata and explanations of what kind of
activities are good for what kind of goals/abilities/learning styles is the
best way around that in my opinion.  Of course, especially for younger
learners, a lot of personal preferences remain undiscovered/unarticulated...


On Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 4:58 PM, Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah at panix.com>
wrote:

> My friend Jed posted
> http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2014/08/07/14956.html on the difficult
> experience he had learning how to make a Rails application. He writes:
>
> > Or possibly the real moral here is that this particular tutorial
> > isn't the best option for hobbyists—or to put it the other way
> > around, that I'm not part of its core audience. In chapters 2 and 3,
> > it provides a fun and accessible entry point for test-driven
> > development and Heroku, and those parts are certainly suitable for
> > hobbyists; but in chapter 1, it provides an extraordinarily high
> > barrier to entry. So maybe someone like me who just wants an easy way
> > to set up a toy web app for my own use should stick with the more
> > basic Rails tutorials, like the abovelinked Getting Started.
>
> I thought it would be good to share this here, to remind us that as we
> write curricula and tools for self-paced learners,
> 1) not everyone will need to learn high-octane software engineering
> practices
> 2) we need to give the hobbyist crowd explanations that help them
> understand what they can skip
> 3) we run a risk of intimidating the toying-around crowd if we foist big
> giant syllabi on them that includes stuff they don't need
>
> --
> Sumana Harihareswara
> http://www.harihareswara.net/
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