Head First Triathlon Part 2

It's time for leg 2 of the Head First Triathlon (Click here for Part 1). Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to do a little reconnaissance on your favorite Head First books and research how some of our trademark learning elements are used. You'll need to puzzle out the purpose of a few of our most frequently used elements and explain the role they play in the learning process. Here are a few examples:

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This is Skeptical Girl. She’s that kid in class who’s just a little behind... but always thinks that she’s a little ahead. Learners almost always identify with Skeptical Girl at some point in a book, and she often asks that question that’s on all our minds... even if it means we really aren’t seeing an important part of the big picture.

Even better, Skeptical Girl can be wrong without us being wrong. She stands in for the learner when you need to get that not-so-obvious point across, without embarrassing your learner
for thinking about something incorrectly.

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It’s not enough to simply ask the learner to do something... you have to try and make them do something. Add a space for learners to write their answers, draw some blanks for them to write
in, even give a few handwritten sample answers... these are key in getting a learner to pick up their pencil (or pen) and actually WRITE IN THE BOOK.

If your learner isn’t engaged and participating, their learning experience won’t be as effective. Get the learner involved!

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Now it's your turn! Click through for some Head First elements to discuss. Send us an email with what you think the purpose of each of the elements is. How does the it help in learning? Is it only used in certain situations?

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Posted by Caitrin McCullough on Friday, Apr 25 Permalink | Comments (0)

Welcome to the Head First Triathlon

For a while now, we've been taking submissions for titles you think we should publish. But to put out great titles, we need great authors... and even though you don't know it, you may be just the Head First author we're looking for. Over the next few weeks, we're going to challenge you to take part in a Head First triathlon.

For now, don't worry about if you really would write an entire book, or get stressed out about contracts or anything like that. Just work through the exercises on the next few pages. Even if you're not interested in authoring, you'll learn more about what makes Head First unique, and how we've been making Head First unique. So without further ado...

It's not a popularity contest

We want people to like us. We want people to love us. Heck, we want people to wear us out, and write on us, and kiss on us in front of their significant others... well, maybe not us, but at least our books. But how do we do that? What makes people so crazy about Head First books? It's time for you to start figuring that out for yourself.

 

Open up your favorite web browser, and surf on over to Amazon.com. Your job is to read 5 or 10 customer reviews for several Head First books, and then read the reviews for books that compete with the Head First series. What's different about the Head First reviews? Are there some common elements to the reviews for Head First books? Click on the Exercise icon to get to the rest of this post, and we'll tell you what you need to do...

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Posted by Caitrin McCullough on Thursday, Apr 17 Permalink | Comments (1)

Aiming for 'cartoon code' first

In these days of high tempo projects and agile practices we're seeing a resurgence of interest in the craft of writing great and beautiful code. There are right now whole online areas dedicated to the pursuit and recognition of these examples of great code, and I for one honestly think that's a really great thing.

However, it hasn't always been the case. It wasn't that long ago that the emphasis was on complex modeling tools and heavy, front-end biased processes that shuffled code development to the tail end of a project. This was supposed to result in much more successful software projects and, let's be honest, it didn't. (Click on the image below for a larger version.)

So I see this resurgence of code as being a first class citizen in software development as being a good thing. After all, in the end it's the code that does the job and no matter how many documents you've produced, it's the code and the design decisions it embodies that helps to make your software is a success.

However this post is not about beautiful code. You see, beauty is only half the story. I prefer my code, even the uglier examples, to be first and foremost readable. That's what this post is all about, and I call it "cartoon code."

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Posted by Russell Miles on Monday, Apr 7 Permalink | Comments (6)