From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-03-09T03:07:08+09:00
Subject: Re: elseif v. elsif ??

On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 09:10:19PM +0900, Marc Heiler wrote:
> "The "Ruby in 20 Minutes" tutorial is obviously geared to the 
> experienced programmer"
> 
> Everyone should start with the pickaxe2, really. Or Pine tutorial. ;-)

The Pickaxe has some severe shortcomings as an instructional text for
people who are not experienced programmers.  It's a great book in many
ways, but for a newbie programmer, not so much.  It assumes a fair bit
of foreknowledge.

I'm glad Messrs. Thomas and Hunt didn't decide to try to make the
Pickaxe everything to everyone.  Books that result from such an attempt
tend to be notoriously bad at being anything to anyone.  Pick a target
audience for your book, and stick to it -- you'll have better luck that
way.  The Pickaxe is great within its niche.  Just don't make the
mistake of thinking that niche is for people who are new to programming.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);