Post Race!

I've changed up the table of contents a bit:

Chapter 1. Visual Studios
A) The Integrated Developing Environment
B) Type of Projects
C) Starting a New Project

Chapter 2. Vb.Net Basics
A) Option Strict
B) Declaring variables
C) Output
D) Input
E) Comment
F) Arithmetic

Chapter 3. Logic
A) Introduction to Conditional Logic
B) If statement
C) Select/Case statement
D) Operators

Chapter 4. Loops
A) Introduction to Loops
B) For Loop
C) For Each Loop
D) Do Loop

Chapter 5. String Manipulation
A) Concatenation
B) Substring

Chapter 6. Collections
A) Introduction to Collections
B) Array
C) List
D) Dictionary

Chapter 7. Functions and Subs
A) Introduction to Functions and Subs
B) Function
C) Sub
D) Parameters

Chapter 8. Conversions
A) Introduction to type conversions
B) Type Conversion Functions
C) Parse
D) Try Parse

Chapter 9. Containers
A) Introduction to containers
B) Structure
C) Class

Chapter 10. Events
A) Introduction to Events
B) Generating events
C) Creating events

I think that's much better.

I've also finished 1 - 8 and I've started on chapter 9 already.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

Sorry, I haven't reached chapter 2 yet so don't know how.

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Lol, I was just asking about the topics themselves and not the content yet.

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Originally Posted by dday9

The reason I'm doing it is because, honestly I always refer people to HomeandLearn's website, but I don't feel like it's structured properly. And I also don't agree fully on methods that they are teaching too.

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This is pretty ambitious. Tutorials really eats up time to create.

I'm actually almost finished. Only a few more chapters and I'm done.

I'm curious. Are they videos ? Written ?

Do they include how to make glass and how to destroy companies that annoy you?

By the way, where's the chapter on debugging? I'd put that very early on, because breakpoints and stepping are how I'd want the student to be able to watch what the program is doing.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

By the way, where's the chapter on debugging? I'd put that very early on, because breakpoints and stepping are how I'd want the student to be able to watch what the program is doing.

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I was thinking about doing a chapter on debugging but to be hones I'm not good at it myself. All I really do is setup breakpoints and watch variables in my watch window.

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Originally Posted by Niya

I'm curious. Are they videos ? Written ?

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They are all written. I have the content already for most of it. Once I finish then I'll work on the web page.

I ment for the post to be in this format:

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Originally Posted by Niya

I'm curious. Are they videos ? Written ?

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They are all written. I have the content already for most of it. Once I finish then I'll work on the web page.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

By the way, where's the chapter on debugging? I'd put that very early on, because breakpoints and stepping are how I'd want the student to be able to watch what the program is doing.

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I was thinking about doing a chapter on debugging but to be hones I'm not good at it myself. All I really do is setup breakpoints and watch variables in my watch window.

But because it's the post race I'll just double post.

Actually, I wouldn't necessarily go far beyond just that in debugging. I'm not as keen on watch variables, though they have their uses. The key points I'd want to cover is setting breakpoints and stepping through code as well as being able to look at the contents of variables (either with watch variables, Shift+F9, or just the tooltip you get when hovering over the variables). What you say is "not good at is myself" covers 95% of the meat of the matter. The rest is just details of vastly less significance.

Debug.WriteLine as a tracing method and conditional breaking should also be covered in debugging. I've solved some really pesky bugs in multithreaded components using those techniques.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

I'm not as keen on watch variables, though they have their uses.

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I can't live without them. I use single stepping in combination with watch variables to see in slow-mo how the state of a program changes in certain buggy portions.

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Originally Posted by Niya

I can't live without them. I use single stepping in combination with watch variables to see in slow-mo how the state of a program changes in certain buggy portions.

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That is what I do as well, especially whenever I'm working with my game files. I'm able to track how the map of a certain game moves and adjust accordingly whenever I watch variables through the watch window.

I have done that, at times, but I generally am only watching one variable and it is in the line in question, so I often don't bother setting Watch variables but just mouse over things. Still, those basic things do cover the bulk of the subject. So, an early chapter on basic debugging (a thin chapter, at that), would be good. Those other items that Niya pointed out, are, as Niya also mentioned, useful for some fairly arcane situations that hardly need be covered in an intro to debugging. However, covering just those basic things will really let the user understand what the program is doing line by line, which seems likely to help somebody who is just starting out.

What I'll do is add a title named: Running Your Code as a 'sub-chapter' after the Option Strict sub-chapter.

By the way the watch window is also great when tracking the FPS of a game. Generally what I'll do is copy and paste that FPS value from the watch window to a blank notepad and check for any sudden jumps. When I see a jump I'll recreate the different scenarios to see what caused the inconsistency.

Actually what I'll do is add a title named: Running Your Code as a 'sub-chapter' after the Declaring Variables sub-chapter rather than the Option Strict sub-chapter.

The thing that kind of jumped out at me when reading the original table of contents is since Subs and Functions is covered in Chapter 7, I was wondering where you were going to be putting all the code up to that point.
It seems like there needs to be some coverage of those, plus variable scoping as part of Chapter 2.
And, I suppose File I/O hasn't got its own chapter yet, or does that fall under the category of "after" LINQ.
It could be under the Input/Output section of Chapter 2, but those titles seem vague so I don't know if they're covering GUI input/output or console input/ouput, or file I/O, or all forms of I/O.

His table of contents seem to focus squarely on general knowledge needed for building and debugging apps in VB.Net. File I/O is specific to libraries within the framework. Once you start down that path, you're gonna have to feed that beast. That means socket programming, GDI+, DirectX, HTTP programming just to name a few. Its endless. The MSDN already meets this need. You need to teach people how to code first which is what his tutorial is focused on.

Also, all the coding up til the Containers chapter is done in a Console Application. Whenever you start a blank Console Application, VS automatically has the Sub Main() coded for you.

So everything is being taught to be preformed in the Sub Main() up until the Functions and Subs chapter.