Learning Resource Structure

[Morgan McDermott]

Repost from DSource:


The first thing on my agenda is coming up with a design for the 
structure. The abstract model for this project's "flow" should enable 
speedy and comprehensive learning, as well as easy and intuitive access 
to what I will call the "reference". I have divided this design into 
these two parts based on how I learn and use informative material 
pertaining to programming languages, so it will be necessary to modify 
this model to allow for people who learn differently to still learn easily.

As I learn a language, I will read books and tutorials to get a feel for 
the language's syntax (much akin to how one would learn the grammar of a 
foreign language). Once I have taken in enough information and written 
enough code, this all becomes second nature and I rarely refer back to 
these "beginner resources". After this point, I read tutorials on more 
advanced features, my code gets cleaner, and I get really comfortable 
with the language. From here, I read the occasional Advanced tutorial 
when I stumble across one, but I am still researching things on the web; 
primarily, I lookup information about functions and API's. What I 
research after I'm comfortable with the language is what I call 
"reference information", or something like the vocabulary of a foreign 
language. Advanced tutorials past this point generally cover things, 
using our metaphor again, like prose or internal mechanisms.

/** Visual portion edited out..
  *	See http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=12007
  */

But again, this is simply a model of a perfect resource for myself and 
we need to consider the different ways people learn and use information 
right now, while we're designing the structure and flow. On this note, I 
would like feedback and structural suggestions from anyone who has an 
opinion on this topic, no matter how mild or obscure.

Things to think about:

       -Would you like D's primary information resource to be structured 
as above?
       -If not, then how?

       -Would the above structure allow for the most speedy and 
comprehensive learning for the most people?

       -What if the ONLY D Resource you could find was structured like 
this? Would it be good or bad?
       -If there existed ONLY one resource, how would you structure it?