出版与作家生涯2015blog.stephenwolfram.com
我写了一本书来教 Wolfram 语言
I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language
导读
这篇是 Stephen Wolfram 介绍自己为 Wolfram Language 写入门书。HN 讨论虽多围绕开源与商业生态，但对写作者有启发：技术教学写作若忽略新手动机、把实用成果放到最后，再强大的工具也难以留住读者；同时要避免专家盲点和过度包装。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
先给读者一个马上能动手、能获得成就感的小目标，再展开系统知识。
- 02
警惕专家盲点：你熟悉的抽象概念和高级功能，对新手可能是劝退门槛。
- 03
少用“只有这个工具才能做到”的暗示，克制夸大，让例子自己说话。
- 04
降低读者的进入门槛和参与成本，教程才更容易被传播和持续使用。
HN 评论精选
技术写作应从读者动机和可感成果开始，避免专家盲点。
他和许多人在学习和教学法上有同样的“专家盲点”。如果拿这本书给真正的新手，比如孩子或完全非程序员看，会让他们很久不想碰编程。要吸引人、给人真正学编程的理由，需要先展示编程能做什么好玩或有用的事，比如做小游戏或帮助处理表格。相反，他把用语言创造有用东西放到书最后。应该从做简单网页或小游戏开始，而不是以此结尾。而且专有工具对新手也是障碍。
edtechdev查看英文原文
He has the same 'expert blindspot' as so many others when it comes to learning and pedagogy. If you show this book or go through this book with a true novice, like a child or complete non-programmer (no one has 'zero' knowledge like he says), this would turn them off programming for a long time. To hook people in, to give them an actual /reason/ to learn programming, you need to show them how programming can be used to do something fun or useful. For example making a little game, or making something to help with a spreadsheet or so forth. Instead, he waits until the very end of the book to start thinking about using the language to create something useful: "OK, so now everything is ready to talk about deploying things to the web. And at this point, people will be able to start creating useful, practical pieces of software that they can share with the world." Start with how to make a simple web page, or a simple game that others can play, etc. Don't end with that. Make it easier for people to use your tool to make games or practical applications. Then again, as others have pointed out, the fact that this tool is proprietary though makes it a non-starter for novices, anyway, in my opinion.
避免把工具能力写成万能神话，克制夸大。
我不喜欢他总在暗示，像识别猎豹图片这种高级功能，只是因为 Mathematica 语言独特万能才可能。
maurits查看英文原文
I really don't like the fact that he is forever hinting that higher level functions, such as recognizing an image of a cheetah, are (only) possible due to the unique omnipotent nature of the mathematica language.
开放核心、降低参与门槛，才可能让更多人使用并共建；教程写作同理。
他漏掉了最明显的一点：开源。未来能成功的语言只会是开源的；核心语言和引擎应以 MIT/BSD 等宽松许可开放，才能长出生态。微软、苹果、Scala、Oracle 都在不同程度上这么做了。Mathematica/Wolfram 很棒，但若开源核心，付费用户和贡献者可能多十倍；否则未来科学计算平台会围绕 Python 和 Julia，Wolfram 的工作会被遗忘。
nnq查看英文原文
...if only S. Wolfram would finally have the most obvious insight that he's totally missing: Open-source it! The only programming languages that will ever succeed from now on will be the open source ones. Yeah, he can keep special-purpose libraries closed-source. And the server-software behind Wolfram. Maybe even the Mathematica GUI if he also offers a free "community version" or something on the side. But otherwise this will just not work. But the core language and core engine must be open-source with a liberal MIT or BSD license for it to ever grow an ecosystem around it. Even Microsoft gets it now (with C# and many other stuff)! Apple also gets this with Swift! Typesafe gets it with Scala. Even Oracle partially got it in a twisted way, by allowing things like OpenJDK to exist! Really, Mathematica and Wolfram seem wonderful tools, but probably as many as 10x the number of paying users would start to use them and contribute to their development (and most of them would also pay for "pro versions",trust me), if only they had an open-source core... But it's probably too late and any future scientific computing platform will be built around Python and Julia and all the great work done by Wolfram Software will simply be forgotten because they simply don't grok how "business growth" and "software ecosystems" work in the 21st century...
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