Re: PiL 1

[Enrico Colombini <erix@...>]

On 13/10/2011 14.57, Patrick Mc(avery wrote:
> Steve, again if you wrote a book, I could do the same for you-Patrick

Speaking of books... I'd love to write an introductory book on Lua, to 
fill the gap below PiL, but is there really a market?

Writing a good, coherent and effective programming tutorial is an awful 
lot of work. I should know: I used to earn a decent living by doing just 
that, in ancient times (i.e. before the collapse of the publishing 
industry). A typical language course took about three months to design 
and six months to write and revise.

One of the most important things is being able to speak the language of 
the listener, but this implies knowing who the listener is.
So... who would the hypotethical "Lua intro" reader be? An absolute 
programming beginner? A student that only sees the world through OOP 
glasses because that's what the school taught her? Somebody already 
knowing at least another language? If so, which type of language and at 
what level? Is the learner interested in desktop applications, 
scripting, embedded systems, games or what else? What does she expect 
from the book?

The demon here is "reader fragmentation". A bigger demon is, of course, 
the wide availability of free material on the Internet.

So, how do you see the "typical Lua intro reader"?

P.S. Steve, I'm not trying to steal the book from you, should you plan 
to write it :-)

--
  Enrico