strcpy implementation

[Keith Thompson]

That may be a good point.

My experience has been that trying to teach something before I understand
it well enough tends to make me firm up bad ideas, though, because I have
to talk as though they're known truths rather than speculations...

Also a good point.

(Wait, is this Usenet?)

 

[Tom St Denis]

I respectfully disagree.  Writing a tutorial is a great way to learn
something.  If you think about it you'll probably even agree with me.  I
would bet that you learned a great deal about shell scripting by writing
a book about the subject.

I agree. I learned more about bignum math writing my text then writing
the library that I gave out as PD.

That said though I had written a bignum math library first. So to put
that in perspective, this person should write a few applications first
before writing a tutorial. Even if going into the writing process he
needs to learn things without some base experience it's really hard to
put any of the knowledge in any meaningful context.

Tom

 

[Default User]

There is always the possibility the code or its purpose have not been
accurately described.


From the Amazon page:

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

C: The Complete Reference, 4th Ed. by
Herbert Schildt

See this review:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1II3TWO9VC455

If accurate, this is book that would best be used as kindling.




Brian

 

[iC and iC++]

A debugger can't teach you the rules of the language!

It can't teach you the rules completely, but it can illuminate you on
what is legal and what is illegal.

 

[Keith Thompson]

It can't teach you the rules completely, but it can illuminate you on
what is legal and what is illegal.

Not really. It's not a debugger's job to determine whether a
program is legal. (And if it's illegal in the sense that it contains
a syntax error or constraint violation, it most likely won't compile
in the first place and you won't be able to debug it.)

A good debugger *might* warn you about some dangerous constructs, but
that's not something you should rely on.

 

[Curtis Dyer]

That may be a good point.

Yes, and placing a clear disclaimer with your tutorial would also be
useful when submitting a tutorial for critiquing. However, I
wouldn't be surprised if someone eventually managed to miss the
disclaimer.

My experience has been that trying to teach something before I
understand it well enough tends to make me firm up bad ideas,
though, because I have to talk as though they're known truths
rather than speculations...

I think it may depend on the person, but I also feel this exercise
has entrenched some bad ideas in my thinking in the past. Now,
however, the act of attempting to state something authoritatively
further spurs me to do appropriate research and attain a more
complete understanding. It's nice in that it pinpoints the areas in
which I'm lacking.

If someone is at the point where they can't even determine whether
or not their sources are credible, I would submit that a tutorial
would be more useful for them to read than to write. It seems most
beneficial for someone who's already fairly experienced and is
trying to attain mastery.

 

[Nick Keighley]

It can't teach you the rules completely, but it can illuminate you on
what is legal and what is illegal.

how? No debugger I ever used came up with a "this construct is not
legal" diagnostic