[Typo3-dev] documentation bug: getting started

[Mark Ravitz]

Thanks for replying Ingmar:

I believe it's very very important to communicate effectively to newbies.
It's a big world out there and for Typo3 to flourish it must be accessible to
people who aren't programmers.

I'm a teacher turned programmer.  In my experience instructing people is
rather similar to instructing computers (programming!).  You teach a computer
to do new things; you teach a person to do new things.

The big difference is that if you make an error instructing a computer it lets
you know by crashing or whatever.   If you make an error instructing a person,
in the case of a tutorial, maybe they ask a question, or maybe they just
quit.  With a person, you get no reliable feedback unless the person is
willing to take a test, so you need to be twice a strict about the quality of
people instruction as with computer instruction.

Instruction rule number one: Don't use a term before it's been defined.

Sorry if I'm ranting.  I've made a commitment to learn Typo3 precisely because
the on line documentation is so good.   Good documentation is _extremely_
rare in an open source project.  Once I make it through the initial tutorials,
I would like very much to join your team.

Mark