I really like this series because of the focus on developing technical sophistication as opposed to a narrow set of boxes to check. I've shared the enough command line to be dangerous with a friend who has flirted with the technical and I think it helped him develop the meta skill of technical sophistication more than any specific command line skill. It's a greater achievement than him knowing the all the flags for tar, because who does?
In any case, looking forward to reading through it and thanks for putting these out there!
Thanks! Developing the theme of technical sophistication has been one of the most surprising and gratifying side-effects of making tutorials designed for complete beginners. I'm hoping to continue the theme in each subsequent Learn Enough tutorial, and I'm thinking of adding it to the next edition of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial as well.
Please do! It really struck me as a theme that I hope grows beyond a Hartl-only concept. It succinctly describes a previously unnamed concept. It's the thing that you want to impart when you get that exasperated feeling trying to explain over the phone to a non-technical friend/relative how to go about fixing something that you yourself don't explicitly know how to fix but could easily if you were sitting at their computer.
More broadly have you though about a generic way to achieve/impart technical sophistication intentionally other than as a side effect of getting scraped knees doing technical things?
More broadly have you though about a generic way to achieve/impart technical sophistication intentionally other than as a side effect of getting scraped knees doing technical things?
I don't think there's any way to avoid getting a few battle scars, but just knowing about the idea of technical sophistication (and having a name for it) turns out to be a huge help, as you observed.
In any case, looking forward to reading through it and thanks for putting these out there!