Tutoriais - Tumblr Posts

Stop teaching top down!!!

So I am trying to learn GoDot because... Well, a game engine can make games, sure... but it can also do a lot of other things when you realize it really is just a GUI renderererer (help! How do you stop spelling renderererererer???) + physics engine. Anywho, so I started following the "official tutorial" (In quotes because I am honestly not sure... It is a big open source project so it can get muddy). And... Once again I am faced with a tutorial that teaches me the larger constructions and the orgenization before telling me anything about how the smaller bits work... This is called top down teaching. And it works, WHEN (And ONLY when), the person you are teaching, are already familiar with what the smaller things can do. It can work when teaching someone who already knows object oriented programming, functional programming. They already know how functions, variables, processes and code execution works. It does NOT work when people haven't gotten the faintest idea of what these boxes and structures you are describing are. We do not teach kids algebra before they know division and multiplication. When writing tutorials like this you cannot write for everyone. You have to go with assumptions of the majority. And it is not a great idea to assume that the majority of the people who tries to learn GoDot are veterans of game development. Sure, your tutorial will be slightly better for veterans, but you have just made sure that newbies have an even harder time starting learning your engine... Whenever I start feeling like I have a solid grasp on this, I will start a tutorial on this... BOTTOM UP!