Thanks, I think I'm starting to get a pretty good grasp of my initial questions earlier. I'm sure there's more questions to be asked later... :)

Appreciate your answers, both of you!

Quote: Original post by Blumenkind
I've never done any coding before, so I'm completely lost. Help me please

Unfortunatly, looking over the posts I see here in this workshop, this isnt meant for someone with no coding experience.

I would recomend you try out Microsoft's learning center, as they have introductory training videos for you to watch for free.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner/

start there, after you are done, then come back for this workshop, or continue on with the xna related stuff from microsoft.

Quote: Original post by novaleaf software

Quote: Original post by Blumenkind
I've never done any coding before, so I'm completely lost. Help me please

Unfortunatly, looking over the posts I see here in this workshop, this isnt meant for someone with no coding experience.

I would recomend you try out Microsoft's learning center, as they have introductory training videos for you to watch for free.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner/

start there, after you are done, then come back for this workshop, or continue on with the xna related stuff from microsoft.

No, the workshop is targetted at beginners as well as people with programming experience. I think the problem is that the first chapter is more an overview of the whole language rather than something you need to know all about before you can move on. However because it does cover a lot of the language, this gives opportunity for people experienced in other languages the chance to discuss complicated topics in depth before we have covered them fully, which means that beginners are likely to lost pretty quickly.

I would stick it out for a few more weeks Bluemankind, at least until the first project is posted and you've given it a try. Also, if there are any topics in particular that you are having trouble understanding, explain your problem in here and you should get a fairly prompt response :)

Would anyone mind helping explain Events and event handlers a bit more for me, as well as provide a few simple examples in their usage?

Quote: Unfortunatly, looking over the posts I see here in this workshop, this isnt meant for someone with no coding experience.

That means that we'd better re-target our discussions soon.

I know that when I answer questions, I tend to go in depth and give details that can be hard to understood. Mr Walsh was of great help to help me to realize that, so I won't do the same error again. But anyway, on this workshop, I'm a student - not a tutor, so I will spend more time asking things and I will let tutors answer the other questions.

So this is a call for tutors:
If a concept is too advanced to be completely explained in your answer, try to find a simpler exemple AND make an explicit reference to the chapter that contains the information. I'd prefer to see a "for the sake of simplicity, we can say for the moment that blah is a foo; this is not totally true but this will be explained in chapter bar - so we'll see that later" rather than a complex explanation of what bar is and how it works.

And this is a call for students:
if you know that your question is too advanced, please warn the other users (maybe using a tag such as <question level="advanced"> </question>:
<font color="teal"><b><question level="advanced"></b></font>
<font color="teal"><b></question></b></font>
And if you really have the feeling that your question is a god-like one, just don't ask it here - but ask it on another forum (general programming comes to mind).

Please be aware that there is a difference between "I think that my question is an advanced one" and "I know that my question is an advanced one". If you're not sure about your technical level, there are chances that your question is actually very simple - not knowing the answer is not an indication of the intrinsic complexity of your question. So use the tag above carefully - that would be a bad idea to see this workshop derailing into an expert discussion.

The reason for that is that there are absolute beginners out there, and we'd better not confuse them with advanced technical details that means nothing to them.

Quote: Original post by dusty_one
Would anyone mind helping explain Events and event handlers a bit more for me, as well as provide a few simple examples in their usage?

Events are C#'s simple way of specifying "when that happens, would you be so kind to call that method?"

The quintessential example of this is handling the user interface: your application should not check every 5ms if the user has pressed a key or moved his mouse (which is known as polling), as that approach is very inefficient. A better way would be event-based: you get notified when something happens.

When creating user interfaces in C#, there are events such as "MouseMoved" and "KeyPressed". I'll give a simplified example:

public void CalledWhenKeyPressed(KeyEventArgs args){    Log.WriteLine("User pressed key " + args.Key);}public void CalledWhenMouseMoved(MouseEvent args){    Log.WriteLine("User moved his mouse to " + args.X + ", " + args.Y);}Form form = new Form();form.MouseMoved += CalledWhenMouseMoved;form.KeyPressed += CalledWhenKeyPressed;

This code won't work as-is, I could give you a working example, but that would take away the essence.


This system works with delegates and such, but as those are only being described in chapter 15, I won't elaborate (except if you ask explicitly).

Is there any way to create a new forum embedded inside of this one (maybe a forum per week/chapter discussion)? This thread is getting cluttered with all sorts of information -- questions and answer [edit]topics[/edit] are mixed together, and its very difficult to tell if someone has asked something, and if they have already received an answer or not. Several people I know who are trying to follow this workshop have complained about this -- i don't particularly have a problem, since i have time to waste at work -- but it would be a bit cleaner IMHO. It would also help to keep the advanced discussions out of the way of newer coders who don't want to get confused by the advanced topics just yet. Just a suggestion, back to your learning :P

Quote: Original post by StinkyMarker
Is there any way to create a new forum embedded inside of this one (maybe a forum per week/chapter discussion)? This thread is getting cluttered with all sorts of information -- questions and answer [edit]topics[/edit] are mixed together, and its very difficult to tell if someone has asked something, and if they have already received an answer or not. Several people I know who are trying to follow this workshop have complained about this -- i don't particularly have a problem, since i have time to waste at work -- but it would be a bit cleaner IMHO. It would also help to keep the advanced discussions out of the way of newer coders who don't want to get confused by the advanced topics just yet. Just a suggestion, back to your learning :P

Good suggestion. I will talk to superpig about this and see if it's an option.

Quote: Original post by StinkyMarker
Is there any way to create a new forum embedded inside of this one (maybe a forum per week/chapter discussion)? This thread is getting cluttered with all sorts of information -- questions and answer [edit]topics[/edit] are mixed together, and its very difficult to tell if someone has asked something, and if they have already received an answer or not. Several people I know who are trying to follow this workshop have complained about this -- i don't particularly have a problem, since i have time to waste at work -- but it would be a bit cleaner IMHO. It would also help to keep the advanced discussions out of the way of newer coders who don't want to get confused by the advanced topics just yet. Just a suggestion, back to your learning :P

On that note but a simpler path. How about a search that allows the users to search individual threads in a specified forum? Everyone (staff and student alike) wants this to be as easy as it can be.

Quote:
Originally by oddexarcadia:
On that note but a simpler path. How about a search that allows the users to search individual threads in a specified forum?

I suspect that would be a larger, site-wide modification that probably would not see the light of day before the end of the workshop, given poor Superpig's presumably-stretched-thin resources.

Quote:
Originally by StinkyMarker:
This thread is getting cluttered with all sorts of information -- questions and answer [edit]topics[/edit] are mixed together, and its very difficult to tell if someone has asked something, and if they have already received an answer or not.

Given the number of people signed up for this workshop and the very diffuse nature this first week's material, this is to be expected. I suspect things will tighten up a bit as we go along. In the meantime, one way to alleviate confusion might be to quote the relevant passages one is replying to, perhaps bolding or otherwise distinguishing the name of the poster whose question you are answering. This might help somebody scanning the thread for responses to their question skip over material not relevant to their immediate needs.