> Well, if not for SO, I would have been stuck with the wrong set of keywords to search with.
This is precisely the sort of bootstrap problem good tutorials are meant to help you avoid. Learning out of a book is not as satisfying as grabbing an interpreter and some example code and just hacking away, but this is precisely a case where the by-the-book method can save you a lot of time and frustration later on.
Another example of a problem tutorials solve is not knowing what 'tasteful' means in a given language. If you don't know what the language culture considers good taste, you'll beat your head against a wall trying to solve problems tasteful developers don't even have, because you're cutting against the grain.
(Yes, yes, a Real Programmer can write FORTRAN-IV in any language.)
This is precisely the sort of bootstrap problem good tutorials are meant to help you avoid. Learning out of a book is not as satisfying as grabbing an interpreter and some example code and just hacking away, but this is precisely a case where the by-the-book method can save you a lot of time and frustration later on.
Another example of a problem tutorials solve is not knowing what 'tasteful' means in a given language. If you don't know what the language culture considers good taste, you'll beat your head against a wall trying to solve problems tasteful developers don't even have, because you're cutting against the grain.
(Yes, yes, a Real Programmer can write FORTRAN-IV in any language.)