> I completely disagree, 5 or 6 years ago i started trying my hand at coding
> circlemuds and snippets taught me a lot about the coder, I had almost no
> coding background when i started and through the years of just absorbing the
> snippets and the circle code itself i learned enough to enroll in some C,
> C++ Classes, and i started those classes with an edge on everyone else.
> Snippets are great for people who are new because it makes them think and
> examine the code and if they screw up they want to go back and fix it
> instead of just hitting tar -xvf srcbackup.tar
Granted - some people will learn. The few people who display
exceptional minds for programming vs. the large number that haven't.
Personally, I learn best from example, and while the scope of a snippet is
usually not so broad as to be the perfect example, it isn't necessarily
bad either. I'd hesitate to say I've never picked up anything from a
snippet. I'm almost sure I have.
However, as an indepth learning tool, patches far outweigh
snippets, if for no other reason than there are no instructions, so you're
_forced_ to know what you're doing.
The best computer science teacher I had in college was Prof. Hearn
- he taught CS318 - computer graphics I. He started off the course with a
standard "what to expect lecture". He notes at one point (paraphrasing)
"This course is about computer graphics - not about graphics programming
languages. I will attempt to keep the discussion away from any given
graphical langauge or library (PHIGS, GL, etc). However, your homework
must be written using the OpenGL library - but I will not be teaching
OpenGL in this course."
Not that he wouldn't answer GL questions outside of class, but
this was nearly the best introduction to a language I had ever had -
nothing but examples, and a list of where to go to find more
information/books.
Took me around 4 hours to draw a dot on the screen in the color I
wanted (proper lighting, viewport, etc). Cept for the last assignment
(raytracing, heavy math stuff I had trouble grasping till 2 days before it
was due and my brain kicked in again), I aced that class because I was
forced to learn the langauge so well that the only stumbling block was
figuring out how to implement an algorithm.
AFIK, alot of people still on the list are still tripping on
things like strings and memory allocation, not to mention the slightly
more difficult to grasp concepts.
I doubt I would have done so well if I had been given a 'how-to' list.
PjD
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