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Ask HN: Your favourite tutorial for total beginners?

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Re: Ask HN: Your favourite tutorial for total beginners?

#32
post #30

nand2tetris.org Haven't finished it yet but it's all about building a full computer from a NAND to other logic gates (mux, dmux, and, or, etc) to higher level things like assembly, memory, cpu, and it keeps going to a tetris game. It's challenging, comprehensive and builds upon itself. It's awesome

It doesn't actually keep going to a tetris game :). The final project is to build an OS that you could run tetris on if you were so inclined.

Cool course, but I bailed at the compiler stage because it feels like you hit diminishing returns for the work you need to put in (lots of tedious regex and text processing work for relatively little learning).

Re: Ask HN: Your favourite tutorial for total beginners?

#33

I would really love one for containers/docker if anyone has a suggestion

I'd suggest "Practical Docker with Python: Build, Release and Distribute Your Python App with Docker" by Sathyajith Bhat. Very beginner friendly.

thank you! I've been looking for something like this too.

Re: Ask HN: Your favourite tutorial for total beginners?

#38

How guns work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJnhr08aIJs How a car differential works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI Downright the best zero-to-programmer course in the world. Wish I knew about it when I was starting out: https://online-learning.harvard.edu/course/cs50-introduction...

The car differential video is genius. It confused the hell out of me for the first 2 minutes, but then it clicked beautifully.

Re: Ask HN: Your favourite tutorial for total beginners?

#40
I would have to say the Dr Racket lisp tutorial ... https://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/

For anyone who already programs I can't recommend this enough. See it as a 1 hour vacation into alice in wonderland. I don't see myself ever using lisp, but after using an imperative language for a long time and having it become second nature, I found it quite a fun mental leap to learn functional programming. Well lisp is basically a similar mental stretch... you can get a taste of it in only 10 bullet points (in the link). it will take you only 1-2 hours. I found it wildly refreshing, enlightening... any time you see paradigms youre used to for 10+ years done a different way there are so many "ah-ha" moments its like firecrackers going off.

The part that is very cool, is that in lisp there are no statements, only expressions. So the 'physical limitiation' of writing code almost feels like theres no rules, such that it just flows effortlessly. Like in English, you can't end a sentence with a preposition (like a statement, you cant put an if statement in the middle of the expression 1 + 1). But in lisp, there are no rules like that.

It's super fun to bend your mind in new ways even if you dont use it. I highly recommend it, it was really a fun day doing that tutorial.

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