Re: does the tutorial lie?

[Stan Shebs <shebs@apple.com>]

Eric McDonald wrote:

>On Thu, 2004-05-27 at 18:48, mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:
>
>>I have not specifically tried the case you're talking about, but a couple
>>thoughts: First of all, the tutorial probably *does* lie.  So does most of
>>the rest of the documentation.  I've written things that the documentation
>>said would work, and had them not work, quite often.  You have to solve
>>these things by experiment, and preferably report it so the documentation
>>and/or code can be fixed.
>>
>
>I'm not going to sit here and get defensive about the manuals since I
>didn't write them, and have certainly been frustrated by them a number
>times as well.
>
>However, I am not sure that it is fitting to describe the manuals as
>"lying". I doubt that Stan wrote them with an intent to deceive.
>
My secret plot has been uncovered! People are supposed to get
discouraged and go play "Halo". Long arm of MS and all that... :-)

But seriously, people shouldn't be touching the sources without at
the same time checking that the manuals reflect reality. Better to
have the bugs and caveats documented than have the manual pretend
that some feature is fully functional.

The tutorial has a bit of a problem in that it doesn't consist of a
single game module that could be in the library and getting tested.
Perhaps a series of "checkpoints" of partial tutorial games for which
testing could be automated?

Stan