He did what?

Ok. I have to comment on this.. I've been blown back ever since I read it.

Originally Posted by John Doe

I skipped it.

How does someone just skip over something they don't understand, especially in a tutorial? When you're learning to read, you don't just say, "Oh, I don't get the word 'the', so I'll skip it." That's lunacy.. so why the heck would you do it when you're learning a programming language?

The same applies to people who won't try to learn new algorithms or methods of doing something - Why? Isn't gaining knowledge a good thing in this field?

It just irritated me, is all.

That kind of irrated me too
To be honest, from the tutorial I learned, I got halfway through and stopped (at the oo part) and I don't regret it, I've never really needed it anyways

I skip alot of stuff my first time over if I don't get it. you just come back to it when you read on a little more and are able to understand it better.

Originally Posted by major_small

I skip alot of stuff my first time over if I don't get it. you just come back to it when you read on a little more and are able to understand it better.

There's a difference between skipping over with intent to return, and skipping over with intent to ignore. I forgot to make the destinction.

I just don't understand why people would skip over (and ignore) part of something they're trying to learn.

Take into account, he's rather young and trying to learn through online resources vs having physical reference materials and textbooks at his disposal (I must admit, I'm a bit too spoiled to attempt to learn under those conditions). In an odd way, you have to admire his candor. He could just as easily have tried to bluff his way through it. He also asks questions which is a lot more than others who no matter how many times you explain something, just ignore what you say.

And besides, this should probably have been discussed in the thread where it happened. Bringing it to the general discussion forum accomplishes little more than character assassination.

Originally Posted by Scribbler

Take into account, he's rather young and trying to learn through online resources vs having physical reference materials and textbooks at his disposal (I must admit, I'm a bit too spoiled to attempt to learn under those conditions). In an odd way, you have to admire his candor. He could just as easily have tried to bluff his way through it. He also asks questions which is a lot more than others who no matter how many times you explain something, just ignore what you say.

And besides, this should probably have been discussed in the thread where it happened. Bringing it to the general discussion forum accomplishes little more than character assassination.

That's true. I probally should have ranted without the quote - in fact I'm going to edit it out after this post. The real problem I had was with the concept, not the person - I do admire him for learning online and working to understand.

Thanks, Scribbler.

I do the same thing I will skip something, but come back. If I have a lot of questions I post about them. Sometimes I'll get booted off my comp by my family members so I might not get to come back to it for 4+ hours.

I learned to program in C straight from the Borland help file in the old DOS Turbo C++ 1.0 IDE. Trust me I 'skipped over a lot' because all I had to go by were extremely confusing function prototypes (at least confusing at the time).

I still tend to skip over stuff in my books and come back to it later. A lot of authors throw in crap in the strangest places while amidst a totally different topic. One book was talking about making particle engines which was cool and then he went on to scripting engines - so that the particles behavior could be scripted. While I appreciate the information and the extra step the author took it could have been placed in a better spot. So I skipped over it and have just now come around to reading it thoroughly.

Certain stuff is ok to skip....but other things are not. Like skipping the chapter on using int main(void) is probably not a good chapter to skip...especially if you post anywhere on here within reach of Salem's powers.

To my opinion, skiping is natural because learning is an iterative process, and learning progress is more radial than linear. I don't know anyone who started any tutorial from begining and learned to the end. Later with more experience one usually comes back to learn and understand what skipped earlier.