Re (tilly) 3: Book Ranking

While there is some truth that advanced people may have a hard time appreciating the position of not advanced people, it is equally true that people who are not advanced are not in a good position to evaluate how many misconceptions they were taught, or to know how many bad habits they will later have to unlearn.

As a result while I wouldn't say that being advanced makes you qualified to decide how good a book is for beginners, it does not disqualify you either. And if beginners are taken as the only judge of what beginners need, it becomes a case of the blind leading the blind.

Consider well the example of Matt Wright's Script Archives if you don't get my point...

Comment on Re (tilly) 3: Book Ranking

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Re: Re (tilly) 3: Book Ranking by spudzeppelin (Pilgrim) on Sep 10, 2001 at 19:16 UTC
Consider well the example of Matt Wright's Script Archives if you don't get my point... Actually, I think you just reinforced mine! Think about it: we all know how bad Matt's code, when treated as complete works, actually is. But, there is a lot someone who is an absolute beginner can learn from looking at functional (however lousy) code - syntax, in particular. Again, it's the Hop on Pop problem; nobody would call Hop on Pop one of the great works of Western literature, and nobody would call Matt's form-mailer a great example of perl, but that doesn't mean you can't learn a lot about how the language is put together from them. Think of it another way: if you knew nothing about C++, wouldn't having the source to ANY program at all, even hello.cpp, help you learn the idiosyncracies of the language ("cout()" for example)? Yes, there is the potential for the "blind leading the blind," but OTOH the ultimate judgement on a beginning-level book needs to be a beginner saying "I was able to learn perl from this" or "I was unable to learn perl from this" -- and that is a judgement that we cannot, by definition, make. Spud Zeppelin * spud@spudzeppelin.com	[reply]

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Re: Re (tilly) 3: Book Ranking
by spudzeppelin (Pilgrim) on Sep 10, 2001 at 19:16 UTC

Consider well the example of Matt Wright's Script Archives if you don't get my point...

Actually, I think you just reinforced mine! Think about it: we all know how bad Matt's code, when treated as complete works, actually is. But, there is a lot someone who is an absolute beginner can learn from looking at functional (however lousy) code - syntax, in particular. Again, it's the Hop on Pop problem; nobody would call Hop on Pop one of the great works of Western literature, and nobody would call Matt's form-mailer a great example of perl, but that doesn't mean you can't learn a lot about how the language is put together from them.

Think of it another way: if you knew nothing about C++, wouldn't having the source to ANY program at all, even hello.cpp, help you learn the idiosyncracies of the language ("cout()" for example)? Yes, there is the potential for the "blind leading the blind," but OTOH the ultimate judgement on a beginning-level book needs to be a beginner saying "I was able to learn perl from this" or "I was unable to learn perl from this" -- and that is a judgement that we cannot, by definition, make.

Spud Zeppelin * spud@spudzeppelin.com

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