On 2013-03-19 20:40, H. S. Teoh wrote:
I agree that doing a full-scale online video course for D is probably
not a good idea at the moment.
However, that does not preclude having a text-based course, which is
much easier to produce and keep up-to-date. Although video is nice to
have, I don't see it as essential. In fact, I tend to avoid video
courses, because (1) it takes a lot of time to watch the videos (reading
is much more efficient); (2) it's difficult to go through a video
piecemeal (you lose the train of thought of the speaker), whereas you
can pause while reading whenever you like and resume later; (3) reading
permits highly-nonlinear consumption of materials: you can put the
current page on hold, click on a link to more details about something
you didn't quite understand, read that first, then come back, etc.. (4)
Written material is searchable.
I contend that a text-based course is *not* the same as documentation.
Documentation is intended for reference: to look up something when you
already know what you're looking for. A *course*, OTOH, is for learning:
you need some guidance to grasp the basic principles and concepts before
the documentation is useful to you. Sorta like a tutorial, but more
thorough, and with interspersed activities like quizzes, small
programming projects, etc..
Depending on how you structure it, you can do a lot without needing to
shoot/maintain videos.
I really like Railscasts in the Ruby on Rails world. But these are
screen casts with tips and tricks for when you already know Rails. These
casts are around 10-15 min so the length is never a problem. It's a
great way to find out new things/plugins in the Rails world.
--
/Jacob Carlborg
