Thread: Do you learn a library from the Reference, or a Tutorial?

  1. #1
    Ethernal Noob
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    Do you learn a library from the Reference, or a Tutorial?

    I've downloaded a couple of Libraries like WxWidgets, Glew, GLFW, PThreads, Boost, etc, and I find that some of them are pretty difficult to wade around when they just give you an unstructured API reference to it. Some Things like Glew are self explanatory but when it comes to WxWidgets, GFLW, PThreads, they kind of just give you a list of functions, no starter information, and you should be able to learn how to use it. I don't know, I have to at least have a guide on how to use the libraries and some of them like WxWidgets don't have many tutorials on the subject, so it's hard to jump into it. Is this an issue to anyone else. Granted i'm not a "real" programmer, but an ever learning padawan, I just don't get having a reference with no structure on how to use it, especially if the functions are in the hundreds.

  2. #2
    Reverse Engineer maxorator's Avatar
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    There may be some functions/data types that I look how they're used in tutorials, but mostly if I know the basic structure, it's easy just to look up the functions from the reference.
    "The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore

  3. #3
    aoeuhtns
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    The first code example of a tutorial, and then the reference, assuming the reference is good enough.
    There are 10 types of people in this world, those who cringed when reading the beginning of this sentence and those who salivated to how superior they are for understanding something as simple as binary.

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