ShowMeDo Blog

Kyran is working on a Google App Engine series for ShowMeDo, the first episodes should be up over the next few days.  They’ll teach a new user how to write their first GAE app.

This series will be a part of our Club (which pays for our time to make the videos) and it builds on John’s earlier Club series which teaches the basics of Python CGI web programming.

The GAE series is well timed - Google have just announced that they’ve removed the restrictions on beta sign-ups so now anyone can get an account and try GAE for free.

Kyran is also just finishing a series on using wxPython and Python Databases to write a useful little app.  We’re hoping to start publishing that series in about a week.

About Club ShowMeDo - we’re recording tutorial videos to teach you all about Python.  Currently we cover some how-tos for starting with Python, wxPython, COM (Windows only) and CGI web programming.  Next we’re covering the Google App Engine, more wxPython+databases and a long intro-to-Python series for new programmers.

I planned on making a long series of videos for the C language (see “C programming tutorial“) because ShowMeDo, the best site for educational screencasts (no advertisement intended) lacked C screencasts. Also C is great for starting in a good position(not too high-level, not too low) as a programmer.

This series is a very informal introduction to programming, it starts with ’study skills for programmers’, where I suggest how to overcome the overwhelming feeling one gets starting to venture into learning something new. I invented the HPA philosophy (Humility, Patience, and Analisys) to guide the audience to have humility and realize how ignorant (no ofense intended) one can be, even while having Oxford P.H.D. in physics. After that, patience comes into play, as no learning can be made if you retreat as soon as you feel weared or uneasy about it. And later analisys to decipher what some author has written/said in a tutorial, documentation, and such.

C is short programming language, there are very few keywords (in comparison to any other popular language), and most algorithms and data structures are based on pointers and C structures. It is a procedural -paradigm language, because you have to think and thereof specify the tasks the computer has to perform to arrive to a certain goal.

In our C tutorial, I try to be nice with the audience and teach the most confusing aspects of C first, for later having fun with the code (other authors leave the frustration for the end, which is incorrect, since the author could have deceived the audience to believe that what was conceived as ‘X’, is rather a very different concept… say ‘Y’).

C is still useful in this cyber world full of object oriented programming languages. And it will be that way for ages to come because of it’s flexibility. C is powerful, and it’s widespread use is sure to permit you land on a programming job.

Nobody can respect a serious programmer that stumbles in doubt when a C code snipet is shown to him/her. That is why even if you do not plan to program in C as a professional, I always recommend to know the basics, as it is probable that he/she will find C snipets recurring over and over again at conferences, books, internet articles, Podcasts, programmer friends, etc.

Even the most popular programming languages are made out of C. This is not publicity, it is simply an unavoidable standard ( C can get sometimes in your head and go BOOM).

Contributing to the programming internet community in mind, “C programming tutorial” is a series of videos for beginners to the programming world, that teaches to write code easily while explaining the details of syntax and programming concepts.

Gasto.

For a while I’ve been mulling adding text-only tutorials to ShowMeDo - basically a regular video page sans the video-box. By adding Guides we can write short tutorials which help to connect our video series together and also link to external tutorials.

The first Guide is Starting with Python:

• Installing Python
• Language overview
• Writing your first program
• Learn Python with Club ShowMeDo
• Tutorials and Forums
• Books and Training

Each of these entries are rather short - just several paragraphs linking to local screencasts and external tutorials. I’ll expand them as I receive feedback.

What’s interesting having written this first is just how obvious it is that many of our videos show you how to use specific tools…and so few teach you how to program.

Kyran and I had already decided to focus on teaching Python beginner programming in Club ShowMeDo, I’m about to start preparing my first absolute-beginner series next week. Hopefully we can quickly address this gaping hole in our collection!