Learning from scratch - any recommendations?

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Tue Nov 5 13:38:27 EST 2019


The person in question is both an adult and has expressed an interest in 
learning computer science, not natural languages, so most of the 
discussion here has been irrelevant to your request.

Scratch, for example, can be useful for young learners but at higher 
cognitive development levels is unnecessarily limited and possibly 
confusing.

There's a vast wealth of resources for learning programming all over the 
web, so many it's hard to pick just one.

But as an entry point for learning LC, which makes an excellent choice 
for acquiring CS fundamentals, I would suggest starting with:

1. Do the first-run tutorial presented when LC boots.

2. Read the first few chapters of the LC User Guide included in the 
package.  It's pretty good, very comprehensive, yet sorely 
underutilized.  Skim the topic-specific stuff so you know where to go 
later as needed, but a good review of the intro stuff on the object 
model and language basics is a great start.

As for design, start him off with "Don't Make Me Think", but Steve Krug. 
  It's a slender volume that recaps the basics for modern, contemporary 
UI/UX practices.

If those resources hook him we can find more.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems


Graham wrote:
> I was disappointed that I only got one reply to my query about LC as a platform for learning programming - I thought this was a big thing with quite a few people on this list, some of whom are actually educators. Since I’ve failed in this, can someone suggest a better way of getting an answer (e.g. forums, mother ship)?
> 
> TIA
> 
> Graham
> 
> I wrote:
> 
>> I have been approached by one of my family to ask what would be the first steps for someone (a young adult) to enable them to enter the world of app design and programming. Obviously I need to ask more questions myself, such as whether this would be to get a job, or simply as an educational exercise, or maybe to provide a launchpad for a startup idea. However, even at this stage, of course my thoughts turned to LiveCode.
>> 
>> So my question to the community is, how would such a person start off - assuming they’re intelligent, very familiar with consumer-level technology such as smart phones, tablets, laptop computers for study etc. and social media, but probably have never seen or thought about what is involved in designing, implementing and publishing an app (I would just say “a program”, but that shows how old I am) on any platform? If it is LC (and why not?), are the published lessons sufficient? What is the view of those on this list who do actually teach this stuff? 
>> 
>> The trouble for me is that I have been around all this for 50 years (more, to be truthful) and so can’t project myself well into the mind of that kind of newbie. One guess is that one way to start would be to find a cheap hardware platform (probably an Android tablet) and try to use the LC Community Edition to allow me to create something for that; but that idea may be stupid, particularly as one would need a different platform to actually do the development work.
>> 
>> Hoping for some insights
>> 
>> Graham
> 




More information about the use-livecode mailing list