brandelune / nipel Goto Github PK

https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/e9sb5q/new_introduction_to_programming_in_emacs_lisp/fashpal/

The idea is great, but unfortunately I don't think that your book currently achieves that goal. My main objection is that you're not actually allowing your readers to make mistakes or discover anything on their own. You're walking me through your personal discovery process, but essentially you're just telling me what to type and what to think about it. There's no room for me to form my own hypotheses. Any mistake I make is a mistake you told me to make, not my own.

https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/e9sb5q/new_introduction_to_programming_in_emacs_lisp/fashpal/

What I definitely like about your text, though, is that you include instructions how to use the built-in documentation and discovery tools in Emacs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/e9sb5q/new_introduction_to_programming_in_emacs_lisp/fawvbvw/

I think most would agree that Chassel’s book needs an update, also because it doesn’t address newer developments in Elisp, like the ability to use lexical scope.

https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/e9sb5q/new_introduction_to_programming_in_emacs_lisp/fanf0ct/

but IMHO it'd be great to give a bit more in the beginning (C-h v &c, apropos, and maybe debug-on-error, debug-on-message). Personally, that's what I want from a programming tutorial: show me how to go on with my path to learning, then give me an average, default path.

https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/e9sb5q/new_introduction_to_programming_in_emacs_lisp/faz74w0/

I think an easy way to incorporate exercises into your text (because it essentially just means rearranging the text) would be to add a short one at the beginning of each section, then walk through the discovery process like you're already doing.
For example, at the beginning of the "Strings" section, you could add the following exercise: "Using describe-function, find out how the function message works. Use it to display a message about the value of the variable fill-column. Then expand this message to include octal and hexadecimal representations of the value." Then you could describe how to solve this, like you already do, and maybe introduce the possibility of following links in the help buffer (message -> format-message -> format) or how to search the index of the reference manual for 'formatting strings'.