CC:T Tutorial videos - What's missing?

[tiggerbiggo]

Hi,

I've been thinking for a while of making some CC:T Tutorial videos, since i've found a few problems with the existing youtube tutorials.

A lot of them are old. Like, ancient levels of old. The direwolf one is 12 years old, and even some of the more recent ones are 4 or more.

They all seem to have a very similar format. "Hey guys, welcome to my computercraft tutorial, today we're going to do a hello world"...

There's been a lot of development in tools, for example the vscode extension, which if taught well could make it much easier for beginners to get into actually writing meaningful code.

Not trying to throw shade or anything, I just think that there's room for another approach.

I'm trying to make something that is able to pull together the "what can computers even do" with "how would i even do that", I feel a lot of tutorials are pretty abstract so I was gonna focus on a practical perspective of trying to teach a few small projects whilst also going over the fundamentals of lua

The plan is to break it down into a "behaviour first" method of teaching. Ultimately, people want to use computers for some purpose, and the first part of any CC project has to come from knowing what computers can do. Abstract code learning can work for some, but I think that coming from the other direction can be much more useful. "Here's what computers can do, here's how we make those things work together".

So, the main thing i'm looking for is;

What aspects of existing computercraft tutorials do you think would be most worth focusing on, and what criminally underrated / underutilised features of CC tweaked do you think would be good to share with new users? Any points of advice on this would be really helpful, as well as any areas you see newbs struggle with a lot.

Thanks!

[Wojbie]

I am unsure if complicating things with stuff like vscode extensions is a good thing at beginning of tutorial? It feels like something to show/mention at end where someone already has understanding of just mod and how it works. If shown as start point i think it might be more overwhelming for people who have no programming or coding background then just using in-game edit program for the 10 lines long programs.

[tiggerbiggo]

Good point, that might be one to leave for later on in the series.

[khankul]

1. I assume that the target audience would be people new to programming as a whole.
2. A lot of programming books start by describing why X is good, awesome, what you can achieve with it etc. I think showing what CC is capable of, both standalone (item management, farming) and in tandem with other popular mods (controlling a factory, condensing complex logic into less blocks), is pretty important for motivation. For the latter, Create would provide some easily comprehensible demonstrations. Think propaganda, really. I suggest reading some good beginner books (programming or otherwise) to get a taste for it; a blueprint to replicate.
3. CC is two things: CC the content mod and Lua. You will have to pick those topics apart and then combine the pieces to create meaningful, connected, emergent examples. Think what concepts you can teach by showing how to make a turtle dig a square spiral.
4. You can probably get away by constructing a lesson in such a way that when the lesson's project is compete, it shows or fills into some bigger picture that isn't evident from the start; for instance, it would seem that you're just moving and digging around, but by the end of the lesson there will be a cute shape on the ground. Not every example can be constructed in this way.
5. Show the user an imperfect solution (sequential item operations) and make them replicate it to experience the shortcomings first-hand, only to then reveal a better one (concurrency) to demonstrate how exactly it can improve on the task. Even in aggressively concurrent environments like Erlang, people start learning it with sequential programming first.
6. Introduce out-of-band practices (file upload, dev environment) by first identifying the necessity of it; for example, when we need to upload some music, or the project's structure becomes bit too complicated to handle in-game.
7. Synchronizing comprehension in an asynchronous environment (static video -> dynamic user) is hard but possible, and desirable. You need to be sure that the viewer will only proceed if they understood the current topic. In each new lesson, cue the viewer with just enough information for them to understand if they remember anything from the previous one.
8. Quizzes might be useful. There's a bit of art involved in avoiding the viewer judging themselves for picking a wrong answer - important for motivation.
9. There might be best practices in topics, like modularization and concurrency, and I think these should be blended in, with care.
10. What about metatables?
11. Not sure what to do with CC addons, they change every other year. Same with user-made libraries and frameworks.
12. A pleasant, clear, welcoming, soft and ever so slightly seductive voice would certainly help; take a look at the No Boilerplate channel to see (or hear) what I mean. Hell, weaponize ASMR.
13. Keep humor at bay. If you feel the need to insert a joke to lighten the mood, maybe that section is too complex and needs to be reworked instead.

[tiggerbiggo]

Thanks for the great points;

1. The target audience would be people new to programming, but I would be very happy if it eventually grew into something more advanced once the basics are done.
2. I did think of using Create as an example, but at least for the first few I would focus on the generic peripherals with the direct teaching, i'll definitely list a bunch of mods that have compatibility during the "what can it do" phase when I outline the overall picture of their actual power in the world
3. That's a good point, laying out the programming concepts alongside the CC / minecraft specific actions would be a really good idea
4. This one is quite hard to do, but i'll keep it in mind.
5. Concurrency is a hard one to teach, although it is very useful. I think it has to come after the basics, they at the very least need to understand functions.
6. Yeah, woj already mentioned that it might confuse users at the beginning, so I plan on introducing it later, when things become more complicated.
7. Good point - Having places where the viewer can stop and think might be useful
8. Quizzes are also a really good idea, i'll keep those in mind
9. Yes, it's something i'll have to figure out more specifics on as I design it
10. Definitely metatables, but much later. Really not necessary for most basic things, it comes in more when you want to start really thinking about structure, introducing them too early would be a bad idea i think
11. My approach here is to teach how to use / read documentation, and pointing them to the docs in the description. As well, teaching them the basics of how to find out what peripherals can actually do by just poking at them in lua
12. The voice is the part I don't know if I have, especially since I don't have a good mic, but i'll think about that. A bad voice can ruin a tutorial though, as can bad audio so that's one part i'm very focused on getting right.
13. Yeah, humour isn't my focus, or my strong suit :P

[khankul]

Made my list numbered as well.
Of course topics like metatables and concurrency, as well as interaction with other mods, will only make sense after all the necessary basics are covered thoroughly.
Presentation matters, and simple editing should suffice. Maybe ReplayMod can help.
If you're going to show how to look up documentation, consider a separate browser instance, possibly with a bit of zoom, so that it all looks clean.
Use the default GUI scale in the game.
As of the voice... while you can get away with (no offense!) an unimpressive voice, your speech needs to be clear (without a pronounced accent I suppose?) and preferably friendly, and a good recording quality is definitely a must.
And regardless of the above, subtitles are pretty much a hard requirement for accessibility's sake, so you'll have to provide them. There are transcription models around that can do the bulk of the job for you - you'll only need to proofread.

[Lupus590]

Something that I have been meaning to do for a while now is to record a programming by example series of videos. I was planning on calling it ComputerCraft By Survival: a programming by example tutorial with the goal of doing a simple project each video and explaining the programming structures as encountered, with the program starting simple but not very useful at the beginning of the episode and ending as something mostly useful and complete. I always thought of doing a tree farm first; yes, this skips straight to turtles but their movement can give helpful feedback on what the computer/turtle is doing and automated wood is very useful in survival mode.

If anyone wants to beat me to this video idea then feel free to take it.

[khankul]

I think a tree farm might be a bit too intimidating, especially for a very-beginner, and I'm more inclined towards a medium-bite-sized format in which such a project might not fit in (at least not in a single video), but I find the idea of focusing on turtles first pretty smart. Unlike regular computers, they can provide instant tangible visual feedback, and that's pretty important!