Heat-N-Serve Tutorials ...

... trolling the newsgroups and blogs is a great way to come up with your own ready to serve tutorials. Yes, I am stretching any known definition of the term tutorial to the extremes here but close enough will just have to be good enough. In my seemingly endless sojourn to become apt [oh, alright ... adequate] at using Delphi for Object Pascal, I learn a terrific amount from reading newsgroups and Delphi blogs. There is a wealth of information out there just waiting to be tapped into and transferred, quickly and permanently, up into your noggin. I don't know how many of the "pros" would bother with this simplistic and time consuming method of learning, but it has worked really, really well for me. When these things come up ... I make room for them in my schedule. Getting on with whatever I had planned on doing, just has to wait. It's really quite simple ... find a question on a NG that really interests you. One you just have to know the answer to. I find that the ones that you need to know the answer to but just don't quite "get", are the best. The problem with simply reading the question and then the answers that others provide is that, it doesn't really stick with you and, if you are anything at all like me - when you do finally need the information involved, you'll never find the question again. Read the question carefully. It's really easy to miss subtle nuances in questions and getting it right, is important. If you really have no clue as to where to start, you may be biting off too big a chunk - wait for something you can manage to come along. STOP ... if there are existing responses to the post, it is also very important that you don't read them! Not now, that will come later. Do everything you can to learn as much as you possibly can to be able to respond to the question. I like to limit my resources to the help files, manuals and whatever books I have at hand but I'm not afraid [and can quite often be found] to venture out into the net looking for tutorials and other forms of help. The target is, to be able to provide a response that is as complete as you can possibly come up with. If in the process you sniff out alternative methods to solve the problem - look into them. Become a master at solving the problem ... just stay focused. Relax, there is no time limit ... the clock isn't ticking. Stick with it until until you know [more than] enough to provide a full and accurate response including the possibility of "lively" discussions on the alternatives and the merits and short comings of using them. Now, if code is involved in the answer to the question, write a "Hello World" application that uses everything you've just learned. If it was a cool feature or bit of code you found on a blog ... just do this part. Write the application as if it were production code, you were being paid an outrageously embarrassing sum for it and it had to be submitted for review by the nastiest most ignorant and self righteous developer you could possibly imagine. If you follow the guidelines in Code Complete by Steve McConnell [you do have a copy don't you] and always do it that way, it will soon become second nature - kinda the point. When you're done, go take a break. Think about something else for a while. When you're feeling relaxed and refreshed, come back and review everything you've learned and check over your project [if there is one] for errors or omissions. This whole process can take and hour or it may take days. The longest HNS Tutorial I concocted for myself took me more than two weeks at a couple of hours per day. I avoided the growing number of responses to the question for the entire period ... it was worth it :) Now ... go read the answers. Thanks for stopping by, -- Dave