Cocoa mail archive
Re: Guidance for Cocoa's steep learning curve
FROM : Torsten Curdt
DATE : Sat May 17 11:53:59 2008
> Imagine picking up a dictionary for a foreign language you don't
> speak
That is a very good analogy. For my situation I would take it even a
step further....
<analogy>
Let's say I am fluent in Italian and Spanish already. I've even had
one year of French in school.
I am bored to death going through tutorials that try to teach me
"Hello, my name is Torsten. What's your name?". On the other hand:
whenever I want to write an sophisticated article - I get stuck. While
I can look up individual words, I missing the proper phrases. Phrases
are hard to teach. (And btw: hard to search for) You need to have
proper conversations to learn them. What is so particular frustrating
is that I am fluent in all these other languages. This makes hitting
the wall when writing in French even more frustrating.
So the dictionary we got is of awesome quality. The introductionary
tutorials are great to order some food in a restaurant. But when you
want to write an article in French - you get stuck. I just don't know
any people that speak french so I can meat up with them and learn some
phrases (yet). [2][3] While reading helps a lot, personal
communication is much faster. And knowing all these other languages by
heart makes me even more impatient. I would rather concentrate on the
content of the article than the language.
IMO there is huge gap to fill between "My name is Torsten" and
something from Victor Hugo [1]
</analogy>
I'll surely will do my share in helping out others while learning. I
would not even blame Apple. Just stating the fact that (while it's
getting better) some things are just missing. Or not obvious to find
as a newbie. Looking at code helps a lot. I try to look into open
source projects to see how people are doing things. But it's hard.
Hard to find a the project/example to look at. And sometimes hard to
get into the code base (if you -as a newbie- ever had a look into
Adium you know what I mean)
Anyway!
cheers
--
Torsten
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo
[2] http://vafer.org/blog/20080515154119
[3] http://vafer.org/blog/20080424190102
DATE : Sat May 17 11:53:59 2008
> Imagine picking up a dictionary for a foreign language you don't
> speak
That is a very good analogy. For my situation I would take it even a
step further....
<analogy>
Let's say I am fluent in Italian and Spanish already. I've even had
one year of French in school.
I am bored to death going through tutorials that try to teach me
"Hello, my name is Torsten. What's your name?". On the other hand:
whenever I want to write an sophisticated article - I get stuck. While
I can look up individual words, I missing the proper phrases. Phrases
are hard to teach. (And btw: hard to search for) You need to have
proper conversations to learn them. What is so particular frustrating
is that I am fluent in all these other languages. This makes hitting
the wall when writing in French even more frustrating.
So the dictionary we got is of awesome quality. The introductionary
tutorials are great to order some food in a restaurant. But when you
want to write an article in French - you get stuck. I just don't know
any people that speak french so I can meat up with them and learn some
phrases (yet). [2][3] While reading helps a lot, personal
communication is much faster. And knowing all these other languages by
heart makes me even more impatient. I would rather concentrate on the
content of the article than the language.
IMO there is huge gap to fill between "My name is Torsten" and
something from Victor Hugo [1]
</analogy>
I'll surely will do my share in helping out others while learning. I
would not even blame Apple. Just stating the fact that (while it's
getting better) some things are just missing. Or not obvious to find
as a newbie. Looking at code helps a lot. I try to look into open
source projects to see how people are doing things. But it's hard.
Hard to find a the project/example to look at. And sometimes hard to
get into the code base (if you -as a newbie- ever had a look into
Adium you know what I mean)
Anyway!
cheers
--
Torsten
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo
[2] http://vafer.org/blog/20080515154119
[3] http://vafer.org/blog/20080424190102
