Show HN: My C# Tutorial Series: Coding Basics. How am I doing so far?

I find interesting that you took the approach of explaining a console application instead of a form app. More interesting from a technical point of view but maybe less interesting for a someone who just wants to hack something together to see what happens. When I started using C I always found hard to follow this tutorial because I like to use what I learnt in my own programs but I really did had no ideas of what console apps to make. Instead with server languages (for example) I found it easier because I could create my website and therefore do something "mine". In the end just following the steps of a tutorial I think it's about 30% of the learning process. Making mistakes is a good 50%. And to make them you must try your own things.

FYI

>> Using Statement - Defines the scope for your application’s objects and disposes them when they’re done. This isn’t super important now, but I’m going to cover some other ways we can implement using statements in C#. What you need to know now is it’s including the types in the System namespace in your scope so you can use them.

This is entirely wrong. The 'using' in your example is the using directive, not the using statement. They are entirely unrelated.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/sf0df423(v=vs.80).as... - using directive http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/yh598w02(v=vs.80).as... - using statement

Also, I really don't see why you are focussing on using the command line to compile programs. This is really not user friendly. The possibility for mistake is very high, which will certainly throw the target user of his/her tracks.

Great start Jeremy, I've read the entirety of chapter 3 and skimmed chapter 1, you have a solid foundation.

However, I have a few, hopefully constructive, critiques:

(1) As mentioned by qwerty69, links to the other chapters would help a great deal.

(2) Your target audience is "newbies"? If that's the case, it makes sense that you would provide a little more explanation for critical concepts such as variables. In chapter 3, specifically, it feels as if you gloss over the topic by deeming it a "a space to put data." Maybe you're just looking for your audience to build an intuitive notion of the concept, but annecdotally I've always enjoyed learning the essential details when tackling new topics.

(3) Speak authoritatively; don't inject fluff into your sentences. It drains mental capacity. For some examples:

"You just press that button and it will compile and run your program. Or you can just press F5 and that will do the same thing" ==> "Press that button, or F5, to compile and run your program."

"The new method Console.ReadLine() is pretty self explanatory, it reads a line of text from the console" ==> "Console.ReadLine() reads a line of text from the console."

Concise, to the point, and much more effective. I prefer reading books that explain the most in the least words possible.

Either way, keep up the good work. The more resources budding programmers have access to, the better!

My background: C# pays for my family, my wife is constantly jumping on and off random tutorials to learn some programming (interested in C# because of my dayjob and Python as a nice beginner's language with lots of learning resources).

If I look at this article I feel that the flow is missing. It is well written, has nice screen shots and explains a lot. But it seems to hop around a lot. I don't quite know who you're targeting, but I'm reasonably sure you'd confuse the hell out of my (intelligent, brilliant) wife.

The style is more documentation slash dissection of stuff, less introduction with a purpose. I miss a global "why", you provide more like "This is something we can do, let's walk through it together". Unless you're already a programmer or really into case studies like this, I think this way to present something is less accessible.

Don't want to bash on your work. I think what you did here looks nice. Just sharing why I don't think I'd subscribe or why I cannot recommend the series to my so.

One thing that jumped out at me right away is your indentation style which is a wee bit messy. New programmers need to be taught good/consistent coding style in the early stages of their development as well as how to use the language. Your examples should reflect what are generally accepted, though not mandatory, conventions.

The first thing I do if I'm coaching/mentoring a C#/.NET novice is to get them to follow the C# Coding Conventions [1] with Allman style indentation [2] and the Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries [3].

One other thing I would do is liberally sprinkle the tutorial with links to relevant further reading in the MSDN docs. A lot of new devs are overwhelmed by the MSDN library and often have no idea where to begin looking for reference material. Giving them good entry points so they can familiarise themselves with the official docs would be a beneficial addition.

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229042(v=vs.100).a...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indent_style#Allman_style

[3] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/ff926074.asp...

You've made a couple of interesting decisions (that I may not have done if I were writing this myself):

* Picking CSC over Visual Studio for compiling initially * Explaining namespaces thoroughly in part 2, then glossing over them in 3 (I also don't know if I entirely agree with what's under "Using Statement")

No major criticisms with structure/style/order. I find that when teaching a programming language you just wind up dumping information on the person learning until a point where everything clicks, so the order of explaining this stuff probably isn't that important.

One thing that I'd suggest fixing is the indentation on the code. The number of spaces being inconsistent is something that could massively throw off people who don't understand nesting. Other than this, it's a good set of tutorials so far IMO.

Probably a minor point but it seems your screenshots all show Visual Studio rather than one of the express editions?

This might be the best tool for the job, but IIRC VS has a non-trivial price tag which a beginner might not be willing to spend.

Thank you everyone for your feedback on this. My reason for going to HN is because it's comprised of experts and people in the field which is not my target audience but can help steer me in the right direction. With your suggestions I'll be changing and adapting as I go, and I'll go back and make past ones better and the end product will be of far higher quality. So I appreciate everyone reading this and responding back, and I'm pretty sure the newer folks using these will to.

I think this tutorial is a fine start. I would like to see more like it!

I'm coming at this as someone who knows multiple programming languages and would like to get Java and C# under my belt. I'm not exactly a newbie, but I think a few years ago (when I was a newbie) I would have followed it pretty well.

I don't think you should target people who don't know what a variable is (i.e. true newbies) but rather write a separate {tutorial,set of tutorials} for that. I like how the focus here is just C#.

I think the style/presentation is spot on - conversational without being cheeky.

Please do continue! :)

I got some good feedback last time, it's helpful to hear from other programmers whether what I'm doing here is going to help newbies. I swear I'm not spamming I don't make a dime for it anyway ;)

You could add links to the other chapters at the beginning of each article. This way it will be much easier for readers to navigate through the series.

"Side Note: if we end up never putting anything in this variable the compiler will spit back an error. It’s ok to initialize with nothing as long as you populate it later."

You mean if we end up /using/ it before we put anything in it we'll get an error. If we never put a value in it, the compiler will spit back a warning.

"Then we will break out of the loop and move on."

What loop?

Why take all the pain of creating/editing screenshots, explaining through an article? You could have made a video instead. I personally prefer videos to articles when it comes to learning something -new-.

What's your target audience?

It seems too verbose for programmers and too specific to a toolset for those who are just starting out.

As I doubt I'll ever learn C# I won't assess your tutorial by its actual intellectual content, but visually, it looks great. Too often, tutorials and guides on programming don't use enough visual aids, which at the very least, help break up the dense text.

To echo what others have said: don't do video. You're right to guess that unless you're a skilled video editor/producer, it will eat up far more time than producing screenshots, and have marginally more effectiveness (if any).

What are you using as CMS? Octopress/Jekyll?