On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 09:02:32AM +0900, Mike Campbell wrote:
> >> Perhaps you should introduce...
> 
> Out of curiosity, in a XP kind of mindset, do you guys who are writing this
> stuff *HAVE* a "not yet programmer" to go through and test what you write
> and give you feedback? 

I had a "not yet programmer" handy some time ago... my sister (she was
15 at that time). I introduced her to Ruby with a tutorial I wrote in
Spanish, but I sadly did not finish it (but I wrote enough to introduce
objects, classes, methods, expressions, statements, control structures,
et cetera, all with examples/exercises)

I'm meeting her this Xmas, and will get my tutorial back, so I might
translate it to English. It had some drawbacks as 
 * I was (am) very confident in the ability of my sister to learn, so I
   didn't make it too basic
 * I do admittedly tend to write (and read) _heavy_ (boring?) documents,
   as I'm biased towards reference material. 
 
This tutorial passed the real-world test of being read by a
non-programmer, so when I get to have it again (in less than 3 weeks
time) I might try to summarize some ideas for you, just in case it can
help you.

> Having an[other] experienced programmer tell you what's confusing or not
> seems to me to be rather academic.

I did several corrections to my tutorial based on feedback from my
sister :)
 
> Not a criticism in any way of the great work you're doing mind you!
> 

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