Just wondering, is anyone else doing the lessons and tutorials at codeyear.com? Any absolute beginners ? How are you finding it all so far?
I've just completed this week's excersizes, and I've got to say it's quite a lot to take in. They've thrown a whole lot of OOP concepts in (objects, methods, inheritance, private/public etc) just this week. I might even do it again, just to let it sink in a bit better.
I got a few of my graphic design buddies to take part in Codeyear and learn some scripting/programming, but they dropped out after the first week. I'm not an absolute beginner with programming, but I did think that they were rushing through the basic concepts pretty darn quick for the first few lessons. No hand holding whatsoever. I think they have realised that however, since the last few weeks were basically revision and covering and explaining some of the concepts presented earlier.
There were some other early hiccups too (which still happens occasionally, apparently) where it would report your code as incorrect when it was fine, and you'd have no way to progress further with the lesson. I could imagine that would be extremely frustrating for people trying to learn this stuff for the first time.
Anyway, let me know what you think...
Definitely hang in there!!
Yep, the Q&A feature is a god send. Even if you already completed the lessons for the week, it's still worth going through the Q&A section to see the different approaches people make - there might be a solution that turns out better than yours or makes you think new approaches. I'm gonna be finding the Q&A section more useful from now on though, since the lessons are heading towards the stuff I need to get brushed up on. I'd thought they'd be touching on this stuff somewhere much further down the line, not two months in! It makes me wonder how much they've planning to cram in for the rest of the year.
I really enjoy doing tutorials this way however - rather than reading or watching a video tutorial, things generally sink in better when you're made to try it out yourself. Especially when you fail, and you don't get to go further unless you figure it out.
I've got to say though, Javascript does a few things pretty oddly though. The way to round off numbers is pretty ugly. And how it handles private and public methods isn't as elegant as how it's done in C#. I'm hoping I don't get too used to these workarounds when I get back to C# ;)
Hey! Yeah, I'm sticking with it. Some lessons are clearer than others, but overall it's good. I think that without the Q&A feature, I'd be sunk, so I'm glad there's a good community of people happy to help each other out.
I had struggled through a *tiny* bit of Unity scripting a while back, but could mostly be considered an absolute beginner (I'm a designer, not a coder). I'm definitely feeling more confident as I go along, so it's clearly working.
I think the main point to note is that the people behind it aren't necessarily educators, they're programmers with an idea to share. So some rough edges to the lessons can be expected. They're working it out as they go, and as you've pointed out, they're already learning more about the teaching process, including revisions now. I guess they'll get better at teaching as we get better at coding.
All in all, I really look forward to the new lesson each week, and it's free! I'd totally recommend it to anyone.