With the problems Learn Python The Hard Way seems to cause new people to python, and it happens to be the first book in A List of Free Python Resources thread, should it be moved to the bottom of the books list or just be removed from the list.
What specifically are people getting caught up on that you're concerned about? The title makes it pretty clear that there isn't going to be hand-holding.
It's a three page thread. What specific flaw do you think there is with the tutorial?
I personally have no issue with it, I haven't read it/or if I did it was years ago, hence the poll of its fate as all I ever see is other people bad mouthing the book.
I guess in that case I have no right to vote against the book being moved.
i added the option.
I also have never read that book. But if there are bad habits in it...i think the book should be listed as a ref...but noted of its bad habits.
(Oct-15-2016, 12:08 AM)micseydel Wrote: [ -> ]What specifically are people getting caught up on that you're concerned about? The title makes it pretty clear that there isn't going to be hand-holding.
I see this a lot. The problem with the book is NOT that it is difficult. The problem is that it is bad. His "methods" cause much more confusion in new learners than is needed. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Zed will literally start swearing at you on twitter if you try (no matter how respectfully) to bring up issues with the book you would like to see fixed. He also tries to promote the idea that the opinions of those who are qualified enough to critique his book are somehow not relevant because "They aren't his target audience".
As I have said before this is like a calculus teacher ignoring math professors telling him he is teaching incorrectly because they aren't freshmen. It's ridiculous.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments...d_way_off/
http://sopython.com/wiki/LPTHW_Complaints
I don't mind if the book stays on the list, but, I certainly don't want it to be the top item on the list. It looks way too much like we endorse it.
For what it's worth I also hate the Invent with Python books (including Automate) so I am admittedly not easy to satisfy.
I don't like books like 'Learn xxx in 24 hours' which are basically just reprints of the documentation.
These are for the folks who like to say such things as 'Programming, Oh yea I learned all about that
in a course I had at school'.
That sounds like a valid critique of him, and I'm fine with adding a warning about the author, but before taking any action to remove it, since it's very popular and we'll surely get people suggesting we add it, I want to know what to tell them the deficiency in the tutorial is. At this point I really should try going through that three page post but I still think this question should be answered right away in a thread like this. If a tutorial is popular, there will be people who have trouble, so we might be flagging it because it's popular instead of because it's bad. (I'm not defending it, just want the critique to be explicated.)
If I googling for something and it's related somehow with tutorials in the book, it's often in the 5 search results. Newbies are going to read it no matter how we value the book. I did just the same when I started with Python. If most of us cannot recommend it, is it so hard to mention this after the title?