I'd like to write better articles but...
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Even with 10 million CPians what I write about is too niche to elicit constructive feedback so it's difficult to get better. CP has a mentor program and what I'm wandering is would that be the way to go? What are your experiences with mentoring? Is it relevant to my issue or only useful for beginners to get their HTML in order?
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Even with 10 million CPians what I write about is too niche to elicit constructive feedback so it's difficult to get better. CP has a mentor program and what I'm wandering is would that be the way to go? What are your experiences with mentoring? Is it relevant to my issue or only useful for beginners to get their HTML in order?
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
Matthew, I'm one of the mentors. We don't just offer advice about formatting. If you have specific things you'd like us to take a look at, drop Sean a line to ask the mentors to take a look and explain what you want us to concentrate on.
I was brought up to respect my elders. I don't respect many people nowadays.
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier -
Matthew, I'm one of the mentors. We don't just offer advice about formatting. If you have specific things you'd like us to take a look at, drop Sean a line to ask the mentors to take a look and explain what you want us to concentrate on.
I was brought up to respect my elders. I don't respect many people nowadays.
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easierThanks Pete, I'll talk to Sean as soon as I have publishable code to go with the next article. It's a matter of trying to go in two directions at once, trying to make things more comprehensible to non experts and more useful/interesting to experts. One inclines to cover less ground more slowly and the other more ground at greater speed while a compromise pleases no one. I have expert advice on writing style from my sister who's a freelance script editor but even she struggles to make any comment as she can't read 85% of any given article.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Even with 10 million CPians what I write about is too niche to elicit constructive feedback so it's difficult to get better. CP has a mentor program and what I'm wandering is would that be the way to go? What are your experiences with mentoring? Is it relevant to my issue or only useful for beginners to get their HTML in order?
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
I just took a look at your first two QOR articles. Part I's introduction I found rather overdone, but the rest was interesting and well explained. Part II looked very well constructed and probably deserves some good votes, but you will probably only get them from anyone who is interested in the subject. To be honest, I found both of them more in the style of blogs than articles, and yes, the distinction is very subtle. If you want some ideas (pre-mentoring) on article structure then take a look at Pete's offerings[^], any of Sacha Barber's[^], and also FMBomb - A Beginner's Approach to Hardware Programming[^], which I think is a really excellent example.
Use the best guess
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I just took a look at your first two QOR articles. Part I's introduction I found rather overdone, but the rest was interesting and well explained. Part II looked very well constructed and probably deserves some good votes, but you will probably only get them from anyone who is interested in the subject. To be honest, I found both of them more in the style of blogs than articles, and yes, the distinction is very subtle. If you want some ideas (pre-mentoring) on article structure then take a look at Pete's offerings[^], any of Sacha Barber's[^], and also FMBomb - A Beginner's Approach to Hardware Programming[^], which I think is a really excellent example.
Use the best guess
Thanks Richard. I'm aware these articles aren't going to garner a lot of interest and that's fine. The trick is to still get better at writing them which initially is easy, spot the mistakes in the first one, compare with a few good articles and do better next time. After that it becomes a lot more difficult to improve. I'll have a read of some of the those you've suggested and see what I can pick up. I'd certainly be interested to know what distinguishes a blog style from an article style at that length? Perhaps I just read too much Raymond Chen :laugh:
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Thanks Richard. I'm aware these articles aren't going to garner a lot of interest and that's fine. The trick is to still get better at writing them which initially is easy, spot the mistakes in the first one, compare with a few good articles and do better next time. After that it becomes a lot more difficult to improve. I'll have a read of some of the those you've suggested and see what I can pick up. I'd certainly be interested to know what distinguishes a blog style from an article style at that length? Perhaps I just read too much Raymond Chen :laugh:
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
It's really a question of structure and what the article is saying. Your introduction to QOR was a lot of Q&As, and while very useful was not really teaching the reader much. It was more a list of your observations about the overall project. I don't mean to be critical here because it was a well structured and informative piece, but at the end of it I would not be able to do much with QOR. Look at Sacha's Introduction to WPF, at the end of that you could create a simple program. I said it was subtle. ;) Bottom line, I do hope you continue as you obviously have some good knowledge and skills. The key is not to be discouraged by a lack of feedback. And if you feel like being a bit cheeky you can always try a flagrant advertisement for your article in the Lounge - once, or as Pete suggests, ask for a mentor to look it over.
Use the best guess
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It's really a question of structure and what the article is saying. Your introduction to QOR was a lot of Q&As, and while very useful was not really teaching the reader much. It was more a list of your observations about the overall project. I don't mean to be critical here because it was a well structured and informative piece, but at the end of it I would not be able to do much with QOR. Look at Sacha's Introduction to WPF, at the end of that you could create a simple program. I said it was subtle. ;) Bottom line, I do hope you continue as you obviously have some good knowledge and skills. The key is not to be discouraged by a lack of feedback. And if you feel like being a bit cheeky you can always try a flagrant advertisement for your article in the Lounge - once, or as Pete suggests, ask for a mentor to look it over.
Use the best guess
Richard MacCutchan wrote:
I don't mean to be critical here
By all means be critical, that's what I'm looking for. You're right of course, the intro article should have working Strata-1 source code with a working Tea For Two demo at the end. I have been too focused on trying to keep the code size down for each article to speed up the many iterations required to polish it for publication. I'll have a rethink and work out a way I can make that happen. After 10 years I certainly won't be giving up. Article-4 is mostly about AOP and is going to need to go through the mentor system I reckon. I at least need to be sure somebody understands what I'm talking about before unleashing it on the masses. Thanks Richard.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)