From: sera@... (Francis Hwang)
Date: 2004-10-05T05:44:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Too Many Ways?

510046470588-0001@t-online.de (klaus schilling) wrote in message news:<16734.60152.928837.828142@gargle.gargle.HOWL>...
> Bob Sidebotham writes:
>  > 
>  > As a nuby, even when you *know* there's two ways to do something, you're 
>  > stuck wondering if there is some subtle reason that one is better (or 
>  > simply different) than the other. You see two mechanisms, can't find 
>  > anything written that describes when to use one or the other, and are 
>  > left puzzled and confused.
> 
> that's what documentation is for.
> there can never be two many ways as long as they are well described.
> 
> Klaus Schillling

Hear, hear. Whenever you have to learn a large subject, you're not
going to learn it all at once anyway. The question for the educator
is: Where is the student starting, and what's the best path to take
them into the material?

There's been a lot of talk about newbies in this thread but I don't
think there's any one kind of newbie; there are many. There are people
who have never programmed in a dynamic language, like the Java
refugees. There are people who are coming from a more design-centric
past, maybe they know Javascript and Flash's ActionScript, and are
looking for something meatier. There are the folks who come from other
languages, such as Smalltalk or Lisp or Haskell, that might make them
able to absorb some of the heavy concepts behind Ruby and maybe they
just need a crash course in the syntax.

The point is, you can't communicate with just a vague general idea of
a person. You have to target your message for a targeted audience. A
lot of documentation (Ruby and non-Ruby) doesn't do that.

F.