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Agonizingly bland programming textbooks (Read 1627 times)
Phattee
Agonizingly bland programming textbooks
Feb 25th, 2010, 10:01am  
Hello,

I am currently taking a Java class to strengthen my understanding of Processing but oh my god, the text is presented in the most mind-numbingly, spirit-crushingly bland fromat. Page after homogeneous page of text, text, more text, and the occasional graphic consisting of rectangles filled with drab grays reminiscent of of the old Soviet Bloc.

Although there's really useful stuff in the book, Murach's Java SE 6, the way it's presented makes it really hard for me to retain much of it, despite my best efforts at highlighting and drawing little mnemonic devices all over the place. I've become too accustomed to books on stuff like Photoshop and Maya that use colorful figures and diagrams to illustrate the concepts they're discussing.

I'm sure some people here must have faced similar difficulties, and I'm just wondering what you did to get through them.
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PhiLho 
Re: Agonizingly bland programming textbooks
Reply #1 - Feb 25th, 2010, 2:08pm  
Well, learning tricks are highly dependent of individuals, what works for one might fail for another.
Personally, I found effective to browse such dry document to get a global idea of what is within it. Trying to understand the broad ideas, etc.
Then comes a bit of practice: use given examples, modify them, try something slightly different, meet difficulties ("how do I do that?"), so going back to the text to find that information.
I often see that after some practice, given information is much more understandable and lively...
Processing is great because it allows quick experiments. Need to learn how to use that TreeMap? Just throw some lines, hit the Run button, see why it fails, improve the code...
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Phattee
Re: Agonizingly bland programming textbooks
Reply #2 - Feb 25th, 2010, 6:17pm  
Thanks PhiLho. I think the broad approach is a great suggestion.
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Ira
Re: Agonizingly bland programming textbooks
Reply #3 - Feb 26th, 2010, 5:39pm  
Phattee,
Your sentiments are precisely what encouraged me (and I assume the other P5 authors) to put pen to paper. On the Computer Science side of the aisle, there is a group of us attempting to address this issue as well–a CS textbook that doesn't make you want to pluck your eyeballs out.
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Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art
http://friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=159059617X

The Essential Guide to Processing for Flash Developers
http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=9781430219798

Center of Creative Computation
Meadows/Lyle
SMU, Dallas
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Giles
Re: Agonizingly bland programming textbooks
Reply #4 - Feb 27th, 2010, 3:55pm  
I used Lewis and Loftus's "Java Software Solutions", when I did a Java course and it was pretty well presented... it sounds like they made an unfortunate choice...
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