Meta: any hobbyists out there interested in a 'code-free' semi-social spinoff list?
Meta: any hobbyists out there interested in a 'code-free' semi-social spinoff list?
- Subject: Meta: any hobbyists out there interested in a 'code-free' semi-social spinoff list?
- From: Ruth Bygrave <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 09:15:35 +0100
[warning: code-free, warning, no code, delete instantly if you want
to see code!]
I realise this message is a poor fit for this list, because the list
is big and people want to see code immediately, so it's a bit selfish
of me--many apologies, delete if uninterested...
I want to find other people like me who started by doing Applescript
Wrong, but whose history before that is littered with abortive
attempts to learn programming. I'm not actually expecting to find
any, as am obviously the only person in the entire world who's had
this experience, but I thought it was worth trying on the offchance.
I want to give a fair shot at learning another language properly from
the ground up, at least as an experiment with Applescript for trying
Quick and Dirty and the other language for learning Properly, and I
think I know where to start, but the only resources I have are
1) some textbooks
and 2) online resources that assume that what you do is start badly
and write code until it gets better, hammering it until it breaks,
working on your own with gritted teeth and going through books and
work work work until either your head or the problem gives way.
I've gained a lot of fun from 'working on my own' and 'looking it up
in books' with Applescript for the past year at a self-taught know-no-
better level. I know the resources for where to throw code and get
told where it sucks, and if I feel brave I shall try to do that.
I'm surrounded by people more intelligent than me, and better at
sticking to a project, and it's scaring me. I want to avoid it
scaring me right off the attempt, again.
I'd love to find a hobbyist user group but there isn't one on the
same continent as me. I want to find people who are running into the
same problems I did with having started wrong and wanting to do
better, whether their approach is to learn properly with a computer
science course (which I am too chicken and broke to do) or to get a
better book on Applescript and try to figure out how to shoehorn
design principles into it, or to get a bigger book on a bigger
language...
Both this list and the other online resource for the Big Scary
Language are full of clever people who are really friendly to
beginners, but perfectly reasonably they want the newby to hammer
away at code themselves, do the work, then hand them the code for
Point, Laugh and Shred purposes, at which point I am expected to take
it away and hammer at it on my own, then post, then hammer, then
achieve enlightenment.
There's an awful lot of fairly isolated hard work involved, and I'm
afraid it's going to discourage me, because I have so many failed
attempts in my past and this might be just another one.
As well as the resources I have, I also want somewhere I can fairly
chattily say Well This Is Hard Isn't It and feel validated that other
people find it hard too, so at least semi-social. I want somewhere
where I can get an idea of how other people at the same dumb level as
me are approaching problems, and where I can say, for example, "I got
a book on Data Mining Amazon from the library. It's at the right
noddy-level for me, but I haven't really got a clue how I start to
leverage the examples for Windows systems into anything I could use."
I particularly want somewhere I can talk about, 'here's a project I'm
thinking of, anyone else interested so they want to natter about it,
is it a good fit for Applescript 'app clipping' approach or something
general purpose?' or 'here's a project I'm thinking of doing, where
do I start before I Start to Code?' or even 'In your opinion is this
a project for now or six months' time when I have achieved more
Wisdom?" or 'Has anybody else run across this abstruse word or
concept and have a better idea than me what it means [SCARY WORD
ALERT]". I have to say my boyfriend is a good resource on the Scary
Word Alert bits, because he's a professional OO developer, but
sometimes he doesn't get the vastness of the ignorance level he has
to start explaining at. This means he'd be a good resource for
listmembers who don't have a professional developer to ask in the
house, I suppose: send me the word, and I will try to ask him what it
means.
I've actually never run a mailing-list before, but am willing to try
if there's enough interest. There's one e-mail in the Amazon Web
Services thread which sounds like a good fit for the kind of 'chatty'
list I'm thinking of, so at least I know there's one person who I can
keep in touch with. I'm sitting on a long e-mail I've already written
to him, waiting to see if there are any other interested parties who
want to join the conversation...
Regards, Ruth
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