Manuals vs Tutorials, lol

Barb54

HI,
At risk of my life, I am going to say this, lol. I know it won't sit well with some here because the only answer they EVER give is "go to the manual". That's a pat answer, but nobody asked me, lol.

I keep hearing, go to the "manual" in this forum, BUT those of us that learned programming years ago, in it's infancy, won't all necessarily agree with that answer.

One of the first things I learned in college in regards to "programming" was that manuals are just that, manuals, lol. They are NOT designed to teach anything! They are designed to give definitions and possibly some "clues" as to the "mechanics" of the language, but not much more than that. A very "brief" tutorial at best that doesn't go into anything very sophisticated is NOT much help to a newbie that knows nothing about the language yet.

A good analogy would be that when I was a computer operator, years ago, I used a "manual" for the system messages. All it did was give me an idea of what was going on, and some "possible" solutions. I never had the experience of ANY of those "possible" solutions being my final answer, lol.

So, tutorials are the answer for beginners, NOT manuals. It wouldn't hurt to push them toward something that teaches programming logic as well. If you aren't logical in your thinking, you won't make it as a programmer. You have to be able to think things through in a "step by step" fashion. PHP Freaks has some of the best tutorials I have seen yet. They have helped me a lot so far. The manual has NOT, lol. I get absolutely NOTHING from either the php OR the mysql manuals. Maybe I will later after I have learned more from the tutorials, lol.

Well, you know how it is, lots of opinions and everybody's got one, including ME, lol.

I sincerely hope this gives some newby encouragement to keep going.

Barb 😃 😃

olaf

I don't agree with you...

The php-manual is not the same like in other programming languages (maybe you take a look).

There are for each function user comments with good explanations to use the function on a right way.

Of course tutorials are OK for beginners...

azunoman

I agree that the manual user comments are good, but generally they are by 'experts' and are hard for new people to understand. Further more, they are generally very complex and make the assumption that the reader understands the problem being addressed.

As for tutorials, they are to small to teach any approach on larger projects and in reality new people should not build their sites based on them unless the tutorial is in fact just 'like' what they want. Nor, as far as I have seen, any php sites that offer up a list of what should be learned in steps. Other than 'hello world' As it is now, new people start out thinking, hey this is good stuff...only to find out later how little the tutorial helped them in their specific case and now all must be redone else maintenance nightmare will shortly ensue.

The bloody include is a perfect exmaple. From what I can tell, most people must have a very simple web directory structure. I have been beaten around the head, neck, and shoulders with failing includes, and no good answers from the experts. So I suspect folks are just keeping it simple, like everyting 1 or two deep. Thank god for the manual in this case, as I found someone using a defined constant depicting the path to an include. Now I can just use the constant name for the include and move on with life. But multiple posts ? how to do this, didn't even get a look in the manual response.

Now, lets look at 'headers already sent', that must be rich for the people that have already enountered this problem, because they can simply tell the to use object buffer/flush and move on. This relates directly to 'simple' tutorials, they don't depict how to get from page to page....

Anyway....I also understand, that if you try to write something that would work for everyone, then no one would understand it.

My friday ranting is over...all have a great weekend..

😃

zzz

I find the most usefull part of the manuals, such as php.org are developers notes at the botom. This is where I find 80% of my answers and rarely in the manual itself. But it's just me.

Barb54

Step by step instructions and going beyond "Hello World" would be really nice, lol. I draw from past experience in learning many different 4th and 5th generation languages. You don't learn them from manuals. You learn them in a class with a "tutorial" or book of some kind AND a teacher(that is trained in how to teach) that takes you through a project step by step. They usually go the full gamot of operations and procedures. They have you test some of the different ways of arriving at results. They take time to say "do this FIRST, there is a reason for it", lol. Oh, and they usually explain the reason.

As for the Manual with all the comments, I found 1 thing in those that helped me, lol. Most were so far over my head, I had NO clue where they were coming from. It's as if they assume you already have a certain amount of knowledge. Well, I'm sorry, but a newbie does NOT have this knowledge, lol. It's like reading greek most of the time and so intimidating I have to give up, lol.

A combined php/mysql BEGINNERS tutorial/book that assumes NO knowledge of programming, programming logic, or system commands would be very nice. Has anyone written one yet? If they have, I haven't found it, lol.

Just my thoughts. This forum has been a lifesaver to me. If you guys weren't here to help fill in the gaps(well, the ones that do actually help and not say "go to the manual" lol) I would have given up about 2 months ago.

THANKS FOR BEING HERE!

Barb

azunoman

I use Safari ,they have a 2 week free trial. I found a couple of the books were pretty good. Others led ultimatley to just bad programming form, for me anyway.

As I use DW MX, I don't code PHP to echo my HTML so I can work in design mode. And actually, find those that use that method, uhm..odd..but everyone to their own.

I have stopped developement of my site, until I get classes down. Cause there got to be a better way of doing things than this. I keep finding myself at page 20 of my site, going crap'e, that french for crap, and going back and re-doing bad form. Guess that how one learns. I have 20 years of mainframe assembler systems work, this is my first high level language that I care about learning...

Anyway...Core PHP Progamming is the best book I found so far, actually even ordered the hard copy. Try safari...but watch out, you will find a shiny pebble, and say Woo Hoo!...only later to re-write it.

😃

olaf

Barb,

of course all the statements here are going in the right way. The reason for thye comment "look at the manual" is that a lot og beginner's are to lazy to surf through page's. I think that people who are on this board for a longer time have enough of answering the same questions. I think it's a little bit to easy to ask for a solution of a problem where the poster didn't understand what he is doin. I like to help here on this board solvimng problem's, but i think i speak for everyone, i don't do the whole job for others.

Barb54

I absolutely agree with you olaf. I can just imagine how many posts you have seen where the poster wanted you to build the code FOR them instead of them attempting to write it themselves.

I was actually guilty of that the first time I posted here, lol. I had NO Clue and it was completely innocent on my part. In the beginning I thought I could just adapt some code that did what I wanted in a similar way. I found out that was not such a good approach. I just didn't want to learn yet another language lol. I'm getting too old for this I think sometimes, lol. I have learned so many different languages over the years that it can really be confusing and easy to make syntax errors.

I have all but forgotten how to hard code anything because I moved into the use of interfaces about 15 years ago. That is what php/mysql is missing as far as I can see. An interface for creating reports of the data in a database and one where you can create your own forms which includes the checks that need to be done would be REALLY nice, lol.

When people offer a 'class' program they could at least tell you how to use it, lol. They assume you know how to make the thing work, rofl. Anyone want to teach me how to use classes or point me to a good tutorial on the subject? If you say "go to the manual" I think I will barf! lol

olaf

There are some good documented classes. Look for the highlights on phpclasses.org