This is a pretty cool idea.
One thing bothered me slightly - It describes bugs as "a mistake in the code" but I suspect a more accurate description would be an "unintended outcome of a piece of code" or something to that effect.
Expand Your Programming Vocabulary (for Beginners)
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Re: Expand Your Programming Vocabulary (for Beginners)
#12Yes, you need a vocabulary, so this is a great idea, but the the vocabulary here is not as generic as the author would like to think. For example: type, variable, value will trigger discussions when people have a different background. (Also there are some mistakes/typos, fe parenthesis iso parentheses )
I agree. Clearly the author has a particular aim in mind, which seems to be teaching Ruby and/or Javascript; for a generic, introductory glossary I wouldn't include so much OO terminology; not only is OO quite tricky to grasp, but in some places it artificially limits the definitions, e.g. "The programmer can define more complicated types using classes".
I think it's sensible to move definitions like "class", "instance", "instance variable", "method", "object", "member function", "member variable" and "instantiate" to a separate glossary, which can be a bit more in-depth. Other glossaries could then deal with other common-but-more-specialised sub-topics too, like logic (booleans, AND, NOT, short-circuiting, lookup/truth tables, predicates, branches/clauses, etc.), syntax/structure (blocks, tokens, keywords, scope, statements, expressions, modules, namespaces, etc.), and so on.
Anecdotally, my first programming language was Python, which I managed to teach myself procedurally. OO only "clicked" for me after a couple of years of undergraduate CS courses, in Java, Python and C.
Re: Expand Your Programming Vocabulary (for Beginners)
#13Typo: “data structure” is not a verb.
Glossaries like this are always welcome :)
Re: Expand Your Programming Vocabulary (for Beginners)
#14I'm a bit puzzled about the exact level this is pitched at. The intro seems to be aimed at someone who already knows enough to be building web apps (albeit with difficulty). "Here's a description of a bad experience trying to solve an Angular problem. Sound familiar?" But then it switches gears and what follows seems more appropriate for a reader who is completely new to programming. "Let me define terms like 'bug',…
Exactly. I read the intro and was confused by the sample SO answer, so I thought "why not put this dictionary idea to the test?". I tried to look up the words from the post that I didn't know: minifier, injector, controller... nope!
Re: Expand Your Programming Vocabulary (for Beginners)
#15FWIW, software engineering is _RAMPANT_ with people who are very very poor at teaching, mentoring, and even just explaining things.
I suspect this is because many practitioners had to learn through hard-knocks and entirely by themselves and as a result feel that everyone has to go through the same "rite of passage" of suffering as a clueless newb.
While it is fairly easy for new folks to find "getting started" materials or for pros to get advanced information, there's a huge valley where confusion is the norm and one is reduced to getting down-votes and withering commentary on stackoverflow for deigning to ask a basic question without already knowing the answer.
I think understanding terminology definitely helps but the problem is more deep-seated. One could remain completely baffled with the example Angular answer even knowing the technical meaning of all the terminology.
Re: Expand Your Programming Vocabulary (for Beginners)
#16OK, that Angular example triggered me. This is exactly why I couldn't make heads or tails of my Angular caching issue - because all answers on SO were like this.
Honestly, I find the official Angular documentation useless until I already know what I want from it and just refer to it as a refresher.
Re: Expand Your Programming Vocabulary (for Beginners)
#17FWIW, software engineering is _RAMPANT_ with people who are very very poor at teaching, mentoring, and even just explaining things. I suspect this is because many practitioners had to learn through hard-knocks and entirely by themselves and as a result feel that everyone has to go through the same "rite of passage" of suffering as a clueless newb. While it is fairly easy for new folks to find "getting started" materi…
There are so many condescending programmers out there; it makes asking questions on SO painful.
Re: Expand Your Programming Vocabulary (for Beginners)
#18FWIW, software engineering is _RAMPANT_ with people who are very very poor at teaching, mentoring, and even just explaining things. I suspect this is because many practitioners had to learn through hard-knocks and entirely by themselves and as a result feel that everyone has to go through the same "rite of passage" of suffering as a clueless newb. While it is fairly easy for new folks to find "getting started" materi…
There are so many condescending programmers out there; it makes asking questions on SO painful.
I think part of it is someone sees a question and thinks "Well why didn't you just google xyz?" without realizing that the only way to know to google xyz is to already know the answer to the question posed.
Re: Expand Your Programming Vocabulary (for Beginners)
#19Good start at a glossary. One correction: string is a noun not a verb.
Re: Expand Your Programming Vocabulary (for Beginners)
#20OK, that Angular example triggered me. This is exactly why I couldn't make heads or tails of my Angular caching issue - because all answers on SO were like this.
Honestly, I find the official Angular documentation useless until I already know what I want from it and just refer to it as a refresher.
Google's documentation is pretty bad across the board I find, not just NG (I won't mention FB's).