Saturday, December 20, 2014

Education

I found a great tutorial online, http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ex0.html.
The author, Zed A. Shaw, says:
"A major part of this book is learning to research programming topics online. I'll tell you to "search for this on the internet," and your job is to use a search engine to find the answer. The reason I have you search instead of just giving you the answer is because I want you to be an independent learner who does not need my book when you're done with it. If you can find the answers to your questions online then you are one step closer to not needing me, and that is my goal."
....
"If someone tells you to stop at a specific exercise in this book or to skip certain ones, you should ignore that person. Anyone trying to hide knowledge from you, or worse, make you get it from them instead of through your own efforts, is trying to make you depend on them for your skills. Don't listen to them and do the exercises anyway so that you learn how to educate yourself."

I love this author's attitude!

What amazes me these days is the number of "young" people I deal with who say, "teach me," in response to my advice to read the book or play around with the concept until you master it.

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