Something I just read on this forum got me thinking...
When someone asks a question that can easily be looked up in one of the site references...you guys tend to immediately "yell" at them to go look it up for themselves...
However...to be quite honest with you...the site references are rather daunting to someone who is brand new to this... And really...they're not much help to someone who doesn't know what they're doing yet...
I was rather lost trying to read through them... The only things that really gave me enough background info in a form I could understand (at that early point) was Zilal's tutorial and the Blue Book... In fact...if not for the Book...I'd probably STILL be lost...lol
Just reading through all of the command definitions given on the site is not nearly enough for a completely new person to understand any of it... At least not enough to put it into use...lol
Sure, they might learn the syntax of a bunch of the commands... But what good is that when there's really no simple example showing them HOW to use those commands... Or what they are capable of...
It's mostly a matter of getting them past the first step... Because once you get into it...things begin to fall into place fairly easily (as of this point...I can read and fully understand all of the site resources...and I hope my current game is proof that I can code at least semi-decently...lol But in the beginning...I was lost... As I assume most of the "newbies" that can't afford the Blue Book must be)...
But that first critical step isn't really encouraged by anything on the site... It's all written as if from a standpoint that the person reading it already knows at least a little something about programming and/or the DM language...
But what good is that to someone who knows nothing of either (pretty much my situation when I first got here)?
There really needs to be more resources on the site that speak in layman's terms...
But I think it would go a LONG way to stem the tide of people coming in here and asking for code... I really think that the only reason we get so much of that type of question is because the newbies read the site resources and play games...and discover that certain things are possible...but never really have anything to read that explains HOW those things are possible... They just assume that there's some piece of code to do what they observe... They never really have anything to teach them that you can stick a certain command with another command to get what you desire...
I think this is evident by the simple fact that they frequently ask questions such as "what is the code for teleporting/flying/picking things up/etc/etc?" They obviously don't have anything that tells them that there are a vast multitude of methods to doing any of the above... The language itself is so free that there really ISN'T any single piece of code that does a certain task... There are many different ways to arrive at the same goal...
But nowhere on the site is anything that explains that to anyone... It's left up to the aspiring programmer to figure out for themselves... And quite frankly...not that many people are capable of that kind of astract leap in thought...lol
Perhaps that's a good barrier to keep out those that simply wouldn't make good programmers... But on the same token...it greatly hinders those that would...and are just too overwhelmed to know where to start...
ID:179270
 Jan 26 2002, 9:45 am
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I think the knowledge base is here, but hard to search. If the forums get a search option soon, this should not be as much of a problem. In the meantime, a motivated person could search the forum for those topics that people ask repeatedly and put summaries on a site.
In theory, that's what the FAQ is for. However, many seem to not be reading it. Are those new to BYOND also new to the concept of a FAQ? Do more questions need to be added to the FAQ? What about the learning tools here is not working other than some people who refuse to read them? Do links need to be provided to places for beginning programmers? Are people getting hung up on the concept of coding itself? | |
ACWraith wrote:
I think the knowledge base is here, but hard to search. If the forums get a search option soon, this should not be as much of a problem. Hey! The forums do have a search option! | |
I think one of the most difficult things for the people writing the faqs and such is what they should write about. Byond allows such a wide variety of options that it's almost impossible to anticipate every question people will have and even where people need to start. Someone wanting to make a chess game would want a completely different guide than someone trying to build a spy game.
I don't really see how it could be made any better than it already is. By the way, the only questions I get frustrated with are the general questions. One such question was "How do I make monsters walk in an area so they can attack?" What are we supposed to reply to that? Maybe we should have a question asking tutorial. I know there are sections in the faq about how to and not to ask questions but apparently that doesn't seek in. People need to ask, where's a good place to start in getting a monster walking randomly? Then we could point them to tutorials and ideas. Once they get that they can ask/look for info on attacking instead of asking for everything all at once. | |
Vortezz wrote:
Hey! The forums do have a search option! Ah, imagine that, a big blue word at the top of the screen. See what happens when you read old posts and don't look up? :) Actually, could moving/copying this to the sidebar help newbies at all? (Or my midbie self? ;) ) Search is generally more out in the open. Other than to logout, the top menu does not have to be used to navigate if you are clicking around the index page. I think something to point out to newbies using the forum would be that the topics are not always properly named. (They are often not, actually.) It might often be better to search the body. Letting the search run through sections other than the forum could help as well (demos, tutorials, etc.). | |
Thanks for the rather rapid input, guys...
To sum up my reposnses to all of the replies...I'm just going to type one all-encompassing message here... On the proposed online newbie guide: It's a pretty good idea... But for it to be successful...it has to be written from a completely laymen's point of view...and things have to be spelled out... No assumptions are to be made that anyone readin the guide knows anything about DM or even programming... Which means absolutely NO "technical" terms unless these too are fully defined in simple language... Even such simple terms as "variable" and "compile"... While these may seem rather obvious and second nature to someone with experience...they may be baffling to those that have no prior knowledge of these things... Bascially, it would have to be written much like HTML Goodies.com... Very informal...and extremely step by step...and assuming that the person knows nothing> about the topic beforehand... Zilal's Tutorial comes as close as this site has to this sort of resource...and as such it is VERY helpful... But it is still too narrow to get most people moving past that point... On the forums: Yes...they have a search... And yes...it can be used to turn up the answers to often asked questions... However...most of the answers given by you guys are STILL given from the persepctive that the person you're speaking to knows something about DM and/or programming... To someone who doesn't know anything yet...these answers are no good... "Look up 'whatever'" is useless... Fine...they go learn the syntax of X proc that can be used to help them... But that does nothing if they aren't taught HOW it can help them... Giving them code is also useless... Especially if you just give them a snippet and don't tell them where to put it or how to make it work... And we all know that this requires too much work on our part to bother with...and really only ends up hurting the individual in the long run... Telling them to search the forums is also detrimental... Because again...they end up with the same baffling answers... Sure, these common answers are good to give to someone who knows at least a little bit of what they're doing... but to someone who would post in "Newbie Central" asking how to code a flying verb obviously does NOT know enough to understand your usual answers... On the FAQ: Quite simply...it's too big and broad for a newbie's purposes... And even it is still written from the standpoint of someone who knows what they're doing... We need some form of help that is basically a hand-holding walk through the system that spells everything out in plain, non-programmer English... "Compiler" must be defined as "the Dream Maker program that takes your code and turns it into information that your computer (and other BYOND programs) understands" Things of this nature... Of course all of this information IS included within the site resources...or can be inferred through common sense... But we've got to assume that our newbies don't HAVE any common sense...or don't understand a word of programming-speak... Because, quite frankly...they usually don't...lol | |
One more thing that I think Newbies should know. A good deal of questions that you may have can be tested out yourself fairly simply. If you aren't sure how items are stored in a list, for example, make a simple program with output statements to test it.
I have a program called testprog that I use to tinker with ideas. When the new icon ability came out the first thing I did was go to my testprog and start fiddling with the commands to test them and see how they really work. Although some concepts may be too complicated to throw together in a test program a great deal of them can be learned through tinkering and test statements. | |
I would be happy to create the interface for this and host it on a subdomain of my site if that would help get it launched, but something like this would take time to populate and a lot of man hours, if a good number of people could participate it would be a very limiting on any one persons time, but only a few people participating would doom the project at it's inception.
Illyena