Quarterflash Designs

I’m glad I have a mentor in this process.

Right now he has the confidence in me that I don’t (yet.)  I’m just having a hard time getting started. The first chapter is all about getting set up. Since the book is about coding you have to have some tools installed to get working.

Since I’ve already been annoyed at books and articles that say “Here’s what I’m using, if you don’t use this you’re on your own”and I’m writing a platform independent How-To, I feel as if I at least need to show how to set up the environment for the two primary platforms: Windows and Linux.

The problem is this: I’m not the expert on Windows and I have to find a Windows box that doesn’t already have some sort of Visual Studio installed on it already. I should have the virgin Windows box resolved as my work desktop is dual boot system and it’s only been booted into Windows once. It just means that I have to pay very close attention to the steps involved in downloading and installing the free version of VS.

Also, in the book, do I use screen shots? After all, it’s a web page, so it’s subject to change at any time and having pictures of something that doesn’t exist isn’t very helpful. But without pictures, what do I call those areas on the screen?  Since the free versions of VS are targeted to a specific language, the page they show has separate visual areas for each of the choices (VC#, VB, VC++, etc) and you pick your “natural language” (English, Chinese, etc) and then it starts the download.

I just don’t have the terminology to describe what to do on that page.

My mentor says that I should be targeting the book to beginning to intermediate programmers. I don’t have an issue with that, but it’s been a long time since I was a beginner so how detailed do I make the installation instructions? How much do I presume they do (or should) know, and at what point is what they need to do outside the scope of the book?

I really think this will all get easier (hey, you in the back,  stop laughing) as I go on and I start to get a feel for how it all goes together.

Stay tuned, hilarity is sure to ensue.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 0759 and is filed under Coding, book. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.