A few years ago I helped a friend and co-worker who was interested in learning Lua. This covered some command line basics, walking through installation of the Lua interpreter, and then getting them started with text io, conditionals, arrays, etc…
After that they worked through several learning projects on their own, ranging from a text adventure game through to Tetris in Love2D. I was inspired by the very respectable self directed path that they took, and thought that it might make a good foundation for a tutorial series.
I’ve been plugging away at this for a couple of years now, as motivation strikes. I’m reasonably happy with what I have so far, but it has been challenging.
Long ago I wrote a Win32 Programming Tutorial (which you can find if you want, by googling win32 programming tutorial)… and at the time I knew who my audience was (people trying to learn in EFNet #winprog), as well as having a good handle on the kinds of questions we got every day, and the kinds of things people were trying to learn.
This time around, I’m writing for an imagined audience… on the assumption that surely somebody out there would like to learn this stuff that way I’m teaching it; and I’m also not getting any feedback as I go, in regards to what is clear or not, or what kinds of things people might specifically want to learn at different stages.
My approach has basically been to consider what the next most necessary/useful/interesting thing to learn would be, and then finding a way to cover exactly that while making a fun little creative project, building on what has been learned so far.
I’ve only just gotten to about where I want to get with text based Lua, and I’m eager to start on graphical stuff with Love2D, if I can make myself wrap up the last text project to my satisfaction. I’m also considering just skipping that for now and coming back later, to keep up my own motivation.
Anyway, if you or somebody you know would like to beta-test a WIP Lua tutorial, all feedback is appreciated 