[plt-scheme] Danny's tutorial

For whatever reason the Scheme Cookbook seems to encourage short snippets.  
What I had in mind was something akin to Wikipedia.  The raw material
might start out fragmentary, but the eventual goal would be to weave it
together into a coherent, more-or-less ordered tutorial.  I don't see why
that couldn't be "bashed" into the existing Scheme wiki, but I do think
the format would have to be a little different from the existing Scheme
cookbook.
	I think the effort would work best on several tracks:
	1.  Make the reference documentation available for annotating, and
encourage people to make extracts and condensations from it, picking a
good basis of PLT functionality.  Implementors and users should try to
agree on functionality that is best omitted for a tutorial.  For instance,
include define-struct, leave out make-struct-type?  Etc.
	2.  A loose patchwork of code examples, tutorials, and relevant 
material from the discussion list.
	3.  The final tutorial is developed from the first two elements
along with anything else people are willing to contribute (papers, say?).  
It starts out with an outline, say from HTUS.  Books like "Programming
Python" could provide a model as well.  Material from 1 and 2 is combined
under the various headings and joined together and harmonized over time.  
1 and 2 remain as points of entry for material so that people do not have
to worry about something being polished or well-integrated to begin with.
	
	I'm just making guesses here.  The point is, there is a way of
putting together the things we're already doing on our own with the
minimum possible effort.  Whatever that way is, I'm for it.  Writing a
small tutorial for yourself the way Danny does is one of the best ways of
learning something (something I didn't start to do until my last few
classes in grad school, unfortunately...);  annotating and highlighting
documentation and working examples is another way.  All of these
activities can be steps towards developing a good learner's exposition of
PLT.

On Tue, 18 Apr 2006, Noel Welsh wrote:


> --- Nicholas Chubrich <chubrich at cs.brandeis.edu> wrote:
> 
> > set up a PLT tutorial wiki?
> 
> The Scheme Cookbook was designed to hold useful code
> snippets.  Longer works, such as Danny's, could also be
> bashed into the format.
> 
>   http://schemecookbook.org/Cookbook/TOC
> 
> I find it very useful, particularly when I'm writing
> scripts in Scheme (but I'm also one of the top
> contributors, so the recipes reflect what I need).
> 
> I'd like to know if others find it useful, and how it could
> be improved.  For example, I think beginners could do with
> a great deal more material -- I'm just not sure what as it
> has been a while since I was in that situation.
> 
> N.
> 
> Email: noelwelsh <at> yahoo <dot> com   noel <at> untyped <dot> com
> AIM: noelhwelsh
> Blogs: http://monospaced.blogspot.com/  http://www.untyped.com/untyping/
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