ID:699157
 
Do people in Byond actually thing that the DM guide is useful at all? I myself havent read the guide even once and I can do pretty good things in Byond. Anyways have you ever read the guide? I myself find the reference way more useful. Although I would like to get some good book on DM which explain alot of features etc. Obviously the reference does the job but teaching on the language logic is good.

Anyways feel free to discuss...
I've read it like once, but got too confused. But I got taught by an extremely good programmer . So... yeah.
I read it a couple times when I was first learning DM a long time ago, and it helped a lot. The problem isn't so much the guide as the amount of time it takes to read it, and new developers not wanting to read so much.

Learning through experience on your own, or from other developers will always be more effective just like learning various things in school; but like I've said elsewhere an audio version of the DM guide would probably help.

Maybe I'll make one someday.
We all have different methods of learning new material. Some can grab the DM Guide and learn from that. Others need a step-by-step tutorial.

Because I have a nice grasp on the DM language, I find myself using the reference as a reference while programming.
I read it when I started, as well as constantly looking things up in the reference until I had the syntax of the language down. Like Toddab said, the biggest problem with the guide is the community reading it. People don't want to spend that much time reading.
The DM Guide is funny, but it didn't help me nearly as much as looking through demos and the DM reference. I'm still always learning new things, too. Of course, most of the new things I discover are years ahead of the Guide.
The best thing the guide ever teaches is what a proc/verb is and really the very basics on from what I hear. Anyways I hope either Byond or somebody else who mastered the language could write a book or something for the beginners so they could learn properly
The reference is the most up to date information we have so I would suggest using that rather than the DM guide... but that's how I learnt and it worked out perfectly fine.
Thats how I learn now too.
In high school, I printed out the DM Guide, all one hundred and ninety or so pages of it, and spiral bound them. I read that, front to back, a few times, before starting. The DM Guide really does help introduce you to the basics of flow, logic, and syntax, and a lot of the basic functions specific to the language.

After that, I used demos and libraries to learn how things work. Then, I started work on my own project with a specific goal in mind. When I reached it, I constantly went back and rewrote it, using knowledge that I gained from the previous iteration to write it better on the next. It's been eight years; I'm still doing that.
A lot of the beginner DM resources are geared towards the complete beginner. They assume you have no idea how programming works and zero ability to figure things out. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but for any reader who has a little programming experience or can figure things out on their own, they'll find that the DM guide and other resources (ZBT comes to mind) move very slowly.

There's just no way to write a single tutorial that'll teach everyone. If you write something that explains every detail it'll bore people to tears. If you write something that moves faster and skips details, some people won't be able to keep up.

The DM guide and other tutorials teach how programming works *and* how DM works. The DM reference just explains how DM works. If you have previous programming experience, the DM reference is all you need. The easiest way to learn DM is to learn Java first. There are better tutorials for learning Java, then when you come back to DM you only have to learn what procs and objects DM provides, you don't need to learn what a for loop is.
I have to agree with the general consensus that most new programmers are so sickeningly self-absorbed as to act as though they're too good for the Blue Book. Becoming a good programmer takes a lot of effort and if you're not willing to put in the effort to learn, then you probably shouldn't be a programmer. But that's just my two cents.
Um, Solomn I think the general consensus was that the book isn't all that helpful. I doubled back and couldn't find anyone talking about being self absorbed. In fact everyone seems to be agreeing that it takes a lot of work but instead of not reading the blue-book out of negligence they seem to have the effort but book itself isn't foolproof.

Also funny you should mention how people not willing to put the effort in shouldn't be programmers. I think that's true in a general sense, as with anything in life. If you want it, go get it, period. That aside programmers are generally lazy people and it's in fact their ability to simplify and condense which makes them useful.

Of course if someone is totally hitting the wall then it may just not be for them but lots of programmers can make it if they just take it step by step.
I think everyone here will agree that no matter how many times you link the blue book in dev help forums (or anything for that matter) there will be a vast majority of people who don't take that advice and say, "I read X already".

Funny story is, everyone who is smart enough to look for themselves, does it and if they don't they ask where to find it instead of for code.
Sorry, Corax, I did kinda post after reading only a few comments and being the narcissistic twat that I am, I generally assume that everyone thinks just like me. I will agree that the best programmers are the lazy ones who prefer to condense things into more efficient forms, however you only get to be lazy once you've put in the work to learn the trade. Sure the Blue-Book isn't perfect, but it's there, it's a source of easy information, and expecting it to cover every square inch on every subject will only lead to disappointment. I guess I'm just patronising the book by defending it so heavily, even with the glaring flaws, just because it worked well for me and allowed a smooth transition to the reference guide where I learned the more advanced stuff.
In response to Solomn Architect
Yeah I agree, people need to put in the work up front to earn the privilege of being lazy and at the moment that means dealing with the DM guide we have.
I learn to program at first by looking at my brothers code and learning to recreate in different and better ways. this was when i was 8 after that my brothers computer crashed i never restarted because i was a copy paste coder. then like 4 years later a found falcey's tutorials and i took of. It was than i learn to do most of my programming and just started going to tutorials and learning. I only recently read the blue book and i didn't finish it because i didn't have the will too read it.
The thing people don't realise is that reading every single word through the blue book will kill your motivation to learn. Just skim through enough until you understand the material being covered. Don't just read it though, write it, build a small program to demonstrate what you're learning. It better helps you to understand it. Once you have a good understanding of the code, just start browsing through the reference guide until you see something that interests you, and then read up on it. That's how I learned the language, and even though everyone learns differently, it's a good method to try.
The thing people don't realise is that learning takes effort, hard work, frustration and boredom to accomplish the exciting bit at the end where you can sit and write a game.

They like the -idea- of programming and owning a game, but they don't actually want to do the hard bit where you have to sit and read reference material and try things over and over until you get it right.
In response to Deathguard
Deathguard wrote:
The thing people don't realise is that learning takes effort, hard work, frustration and boredom to accomplish the exciting bit at the end where you can sit and write a game.

They like the -idea- of programming and owning a game, but they don't actually want to do the hard bit where you have to sit and read reference material and try things over and over until you get it right.

I'd go a step further and say that it's not that people don't want to put in the effort, but that they can't put in the effort. There's something about the type of frustration and boredom of learning to program that turns certain people off. It's why I could learn to program but didn't have the patience for learning to play the piano.

BYOND is an easy way to make games so it attracts a lot of people who just don't have the patience to become programmers. It's not a matter of having them re-read the blue book or a matter of us making a better gudie - there's not always a way to fix this. Maybe these people would do better with a different language, or will have better luck in a year or two. You just can't force people to have patience if they don't have it.
Page: 1 2