From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2006-01-08T08:50:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Demystifying Symbols.

On Sat, Jan 07, 2006 at 12:57:21PM +0900, Chris Pine wrote:
> On 1/5/06, Dave Howell <groups@grandfenwick.net> wrote:
> > Note that the neologism
> >         :symbol is to "symbol" as 1 is to "1"
> > makes not one iota of sense unless one already understands all the
> > complex ramifications of those quote marks.
> 
> This is why writing a decent tutorial is so hard.  Unless you really
> talk to lots and lots of newbies, it's so easy to say totally useless
> (well, useless in this context) things like this.
> 
> (Don't get me wrong:  I actually found it a delightful analogy! 
> Brilliant, in fact!  But I've been using symbols happily for years. 
> An analogy like this feels more like an inside joke than an
> explanation.  :)

I tend to assume one knows a little something about strings and variable
assignments and arithmetic operators and integers before one gets around
to learning symbols.  As such, it's probably not quite that useless.

At least, that's what I'd guess would be the case if you're learning in
anything approaching a structured manner, from tutorials, books,
classes, howtos, or whatever.  Maybe a mailing list doesn't count.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]

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