PureBasic Forums - English

I've decided to take the plunge and start writing a book.

PureBasic - A Beginners Guide
This text's main focus will be on newcomers to PureBasic and programming in general. I also hope it will be a help to experienced programmers to get them up and running as quickly as possible too. Now that PureBasic is becoming less of a moving target for documentation, i've decide to go ahead and write this beginners guide.

You can download a sample to wet your appetite here:
http://www.garyw.uklinux.net/pb/PureBas ... 0Guide.pdf

There is no deadline set for this book as a publisher has not been contacted yet, but i'm thinking i will probably be done by the end of the year, roughly around the time of PureBasic v4.0. So i may wait until then to update the book if necessary.

Who knows i might get it done in a month!

See what you think. Anything missing from the table of contents?

Nice Job

Looking great
Will this be like a help file? Or like other programming books with a long story at the beginning about programming and such?

GeoTrail wrote:Looking great
Will this be like a help file? Or like other programming books with a long story at the beginning about programming and such?

It will be like other programming books but the story wont be too big.

Sounds good Kale.
I hate it when I have to read 40 pages about the history of this and that and the author of the language, if I wanted to read an biography I'd buy that, not a programming book hehehe.
I have Teach Yourself C++ by Richard Riley, good pockey book, but as I wrote above, it takes along time to get to the point hehehehe

You wrote that you haven't contacted a publisher yet, do you plan to do that or will it be available for a small fee as an ebook?

Kale, nice. I'd put a thread of this in beginners section too.

GeoTrail wrote:Sounds good Kate.

Psychophanta wrote:

Hsjjj it was a technical error hehehehe

Very good idea!
I'd buy it.

I'd buy it if there were several chapters on GUI applications.

I'd buy it if there were several chapters on GUI applications.

The idea of me posting here is get a bit of feedback on the table of contents and see how best i can make the book. So i may expand the GUI section further then.

You wrote that you haven't contacted a publisher yet, do you plan to do that or will it be available for a small fee as an ebook?

I havn't decided yet, i hope i can get a publisher to generate a 'real' book but i would also like to have a downloadable version (at a lesser cost) too. we'll see what happens nearer the completion of this book.

Sounds good Kale. I think I'd buy it to

If you put in a *definitive* and *exhaustive* and *comprehensive* chapter on splittergadgets (in terms a preschooler understands), then I will buy it.

If you don't, I'll probably buy it anyway - but then you have to buy mine.

Hi

I would read Chapter 7 first.

Step by Step approach in Tutorials makes learning and comprehension 100%. Without good tutorials it becomes hard labor learning new software.

Best of luck with the book!

Bizzy

Kale wrote:

I'd buy it if there were several chapters on GUI applications.

The idea of me posting here is get a bit of feedback on the table of contents and see how best i can make the book. So i may expand the GUI section further then.

You wrote that you haven't contacted a publisher yet, do you plan to do that or will it be available for a small fee as an ebook?

I havn't decided yet, i hope i can get a publisher to generate a 'real' book but i would also like to have a downloadable version (at a lesser cost) too. we'll see what happens nearer the completion of this book.

I just finished the manual for PB, about 10 minutes ago (Fred's PDF).

I want to be as frank a possible so as to make that PDF better (upon revisions for example) and for books that may come out.

What I found is the the end-developer (users of PB) that are just starting out, for example would be able to more quickly get a grasp of how to code in PB if the basics were more clearly explained up front. IDs, Handles, when to use, when not to use... can (was/is) a confusing topic. Plus, I believe a very clear understanding of Events of all sorts WaitWindowEvent, WindowEvent, etc. etc. must be explained as clear (with more examples, working, code chunks).

This is what I believe any book for beginners needs to accomplish (and there is room for growth for sure in this arena).

With that all said and done I am very happy with where I can take PB even today. Being that I have only used the program for about a month and I have already put into action .exe's and .dlls that have solved several setbacks I had with concerns to another platform I code in.

I hope this helps share some insights and helps your book and others to come.

[Add-in-Comment]

With a more easily understood documentation base I think this would be an excellent language for say kids to get started with (and continue on with of course )!

I'm going to recommend it to the college I went to!

Sincerely,

intrigued, that's why i wrote this: http://www.xs4all.nl/~bluez/datatalk/purebasic.htm#top