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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?

#121

The Rust Programming Language https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/index.html

Thanks for this. I've been hearing a lot of suggestions of Rust as a beginner language and also as a language that is progressing nicely over time, but never any good starting points. If you have any other Rust related material I'd greatly appreciate it.

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

#122
Zed's Learn Python the Hard Way. https://learncodethehardway.org/python/

It wasn't what I used to first learn (Larry Ullman's first PHP5 & MySQL book which I still have, with a spine held together by duct-tape) but it showed me a simple method to help absolute beginners (and helped me realize my ideas on teaching concepts in an unorthodox manner don't work at all for that target group) and to refer to acquaintances whose intro programming course professors were failing them in acquiring understanding.

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

#123

Hartl's Rails tutorial. Probably the best intro to modern full stack development I've ever come across. https://www.railstutorial.org/book

Thanks! Glad you liked it. For total beginners, Learn Enough Command Line to Be Dangerous may be an even better place to start.

https://www.learnenough.com/command-line-tutorial

That tutorial is part of a series that takes you from beginner all the way to the Rails Tutorial. You can see the full sequence at https://www.learnenough.com/.

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

#125
post #120

Repeating something from a previous Hacker News thread... Children's publisher Usborne have made available for free some classic computer books from the 1980s aimed at kids that use text and illustrations to clearly explain computer concepts. These books have been discussed a few times before here on Hacker News. Scroll down to the bottom of the link below to the section 'Usborne 1980s computer books' for the free PD…

Non-truncated link: https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and-codin...

Thank you :-) I've edited my message to include the correct URL.

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

#126
post #93

I have two requests in this regard. - If there's some way to learn playing chess beyond just the rules without memorizing an encyclopedia of openings, I'd be grateful for links. I.e. I currently can stare at a position for a while and figure out a couple next moves that should be good. I'd like to elevate this to figuring out a bit more moves. (Though I have a suspicion that it's a question of ‘rinse and repeat until…

For chess, there's a PC game Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition

It has narrated step by step tutorials by Josh Waitzkin, it put you in special situations to learn basic tactics like discover attacks, pin or skewer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_tactic).

There are also tutorials for knowing the tiny details about endings with specific pieces, like bishops vs bishops where you have to be very wary of the color of the bishops and position you're in if you'd like to trade, or the importance of the bishops color to stop a pawn, or even the fact that in some situations the column which a pawn is in might determine if the game leads to a stalemate or not (some columns results are not intuitive at first).

As the tutorial advances it starts throwing at you historical games and puts you in control in a given position to make the best move starting with games when josh was a kid, which helps you compare your ability to him as a kid, so if you're also interested in chess history, it's really cool!

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

#127
post #39

This is the one that completely changed my mindset about designing and writing programs: What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory - Ulrich Drepper https://people.freebsd.org/~lstewart/articles/cpumemory.pdf

It is good for sure, but a white paper isn’t exactly approachable for total beginners.

Fair, but just understanding the conclusion sections of the first couple of chapters will have tremendous benefits for an average programmer.

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

#128
post #114

I have recommended bandit to many people wanting to learn Linux tools and how the shell works: https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/

Is it down?

Using "ssh bandit0@bandit.labs.overthewire.org -p 2220" I just get "ssh: connect to host bandit.labs.overthewire.org port 2220: Connection refused"

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

#129
post #93

I have two requests in this regard. - If there's some way to learn playing chess beyond just the rules without memorizing an encyclopedia of openings, I'd be grateful for links. I.e. I currently can stare at a position for a while and figure out a couple next moves that should be good. I'd like to elevate this to figuring out a bit more moves. (Though I have a suspicion that it's a question of ‘rinse and repeat until…

There was a study done on what separates chess masters from beginners. Chess masters and beginners performed equally well on memorization tests. Where they began to separate was pattern recognition - chess masters are really good at pattern recognition.

When I was a beginner I would agonize over every move and drive everyone crazy. Eventually after enough games I started to recognize some patterns. If I were to do it all over again, I would just play as many games as I could, all the way to the end, not worrying too much about winning or losing as much as just absorbing what is happening.

I'm not a chess master, but I did beat a guy with a knight tattooed on his forearm, so that has to count for something :P

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