What’s Wrong With Most Godot Tutorials (including ours)

why do we tell code beginners to learn python first people come to godot and they just want to make games but with a lack of a great hands-on programming course we turn them away to go learn the basics elsewhere yes yes i know we have free tutorials covering some good scripting syntax and features at gdquest we even make our fair share however nothing available right now covers what absolute beginners need nobody really caters to these people so every day we see newcomers who struggle so hard with the existing tutorials out there we're talking about people who don't know how to code at all here in the community we typically recommend one of two things to beginners one is you should start with another programming language that's not ideal another is just use godot that does not work because it doesn't take people into account gudo may be easy for you after years using it yet overwhelming to a teenager who's never written a line of code i keep seeing beginners who get stuck on the very first day they keep banging their head at goodwill because it's such a powerful tool and a complex one as a result in the official docs we opted for the first advice to start with another language it's because there's the excellent harvard cs50 course out there that's free and we unfortunately don't have anything that's as good 4k2 except that doesn't work we still see people fail time and time again online many don't want to go learn another language because all they want is to learn to make games with godot here and now and if all you want is to make games you'll turn to another engine that teaches you just that especially when those engines claim to be no code you could get started right away that's really appealing for users and why we see so many tools like these thrive for years i approach online teaching as if students were locked in a classroom and would have to go through all the classes that works for some people but not for others as online people easily quit because you like the group pressure to motivate you and a teacher to support you here's what people want and what works online beginners want a shortcut they want to learn hands-on creating cool things from the start they also want to understand everything why we could this all that way how every keyword and function works they want to get results fast and go in depth at the same time which is contradictory but see as tutors we're here to empower people and help them make games with kato we have to listen to what people need and teach the way that works for them otherwise many will quit if we can achieve that that's more users and growth for kudo everyone wins we can achieve that with a clever mix so how do you reconcile people's contradictory desires with balance usually in tutorial series we show how to create complete games step by step and from scratch it's overwhelming for beginners as you keep piling on new concepts and features they can follow along as they can copy what you're doing but when left alone with their project they are really likely to get stuck because they didn't have time to digest all the concepts and features they need we can do better than that instead of teaching how to make complete games we can teach to create many small but appealing toys and mini games each program focuses on one key concept or feature using variables understanding what makes a program slow or why and how to name things each program feels cool and relevant to game creation as the teacher we can hide some code from the student to isolate what we're teaching and as a result each program is short and easy to explain it's not about making programs where you just create a few variables or write useless math functions i'm talking specifically about making toys and mini games to teach everything in the context of game creation it's great for students they get results fast as each project runs in godot and can be both visual and interactive the cognitive load is much lower than when creating a complete game because you keep the scope of each project small you can connect concepts little by little combine them and eventually lead the student to create a complete game now you'll probably ask why don't tutors do this if it's so much better first some people do teach with small and fun projects and people love it then it mostly has to do with the fact that making many small and relevant projects is a lot more work than making regular step-by-step tutorials you need a lot more planning to create a good curriculum and you need to code many projects instead of only one to teach beginners teaching style also makes a great difference the academic approach to teaching to code is flawed it's abstract theoretical and often based on ways people coded decades ago it works for people who enjoy intellectual and abstract complexity but leaves a majority on the side my first experience with programming was a c plus textbook apro recommended me i hated it and stayed away from code for years after that it does the same to many people who believe code is all about math and not for them my biggest gripe with the academic style is teaching theory first you can hardly understand how programming works with just words you have to write and test code to teach to a wide audience it's best to start with a problem and use code to solve it covering only what's necessary to get results then you can dive deeper when you teach people by example it keeps them motivated as they instantly see the purpose of what they're learning it breaks down the learning to not overwhelm them with new concepts and getting results makes people curious to learn more lastly videos and text are not enough right now we don't really have the best tools to practice programming with keto at first the many features in the engine overwhelm beginners they already struggle with basic syntax and they have to understand virtual callbacks how their code inherits from the engine and magical things that happen in the background we are lacking a tool that would allow you to write and test tiny bits of code without having to worry about the ready function processing nodes and so on we're missing a web app that could cleverly runs bits of code inside godot and we are making that app which we already have working right now it's a prototype so nothing amazing yet but i'm going to give you a quick tour of its features and what while planning in this prototype we have the assignment view on the left the code editor in the center and the game and output console on the right side so on the left you're going to have information about the assignment you're trying to complete with some summary goals hints and some checks that are your requirements in the center you have a code lens it might be a complete script you can have a list of scripts as well and here we isolate a bunch of code so you can focus on just moving the character and making it jump i already have the game working so i'm going to run it to see on the left the checks turned green because i completed all the calls and that completes the assignment now of course if i remove some of the jump code and test again it's not going to work so we have everything we need really to make these assignments work we also have the ability to report syntax errors and keep the game running even if your code would crash the project we do that using the jscript syntax server now as you can see here's the complete enemy script the base one we use a code lens to only show some of the code and allow editing some of the code that way the user can focus on the movement and we can add extra code in the background to make everything work what's interesting is we could really isolate the creation of variables or basic syntax without the presence of a function to teach basic gdscript now there's much more we want to do but that will take time testing and a bit of budget we'll make the lessons to get started with gdscript available for free if we manage to fund it because we're making that complete course to learn to code with godot we've been working like crazy for the past month to prepare the beginner programming course the community is missing it will take months of work to create the many videos guides interactive lessons and assignments we have planned which is why while taking this project to kickstarter once more the community trusted us three times already with that we created the largest collection of good tutorials courses and free and open source demos if you are interested you can check out the link on the screen and with that i want to thank you kindly for watching be creative have fun and i hope to see you again on the gtquest channel bye-bye

Channel: GDQuest

Views: 111,308

Keywords:

Id: yQZKXdwyh-Q

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Xeadriel]

I watched this actually and I couldn’t shake my head more after half of the video. You make a good point explaining what’s wrong with tutorials then you for some reason double up on all those issues and continue doing exactly that. I was pretty perplexed after watching it xD I think that learning App you’re making will have just as much of a learning effect as Duolingo does. People will just do the assignments thinking they do something useful, then forget everything again the next moment.

I think the best design for tutorials is not coding together or talking about how to do certain specific things but rather to act a bit like an interactive encyclopedia. Tutorials should be breaking down every little piece there is to know in concise, short and easy to understand words, shortly giving examples how whatever each video is about can be used. At the same time it’s important to point out good practices and how there is no true solution to anything ever.(that’s actually something I see with tutorials too. Especially when the way they do something seems unnecessarily simplified to the point it’s useless sometimes)

I don’t think you learn to program by following how someone else does or by doing meaningless tasks. The latter only works if you got a teacher constantly nagging your or regularly seeing you like in school. But as you worked out yourself that’s not viable for online tutorials. Yet for some reason you decided to do it anyways and even double up on that? I was a bit confused after that great analysis of tutorials.

[u/lostInStandardizatio]

Bruh, a Godot playground/fiddle site?

Genius 🤩🤩🤩

There’s already a stackoverflow kinda site for Godot questions, imagine if I could find pastable code there…

You’re analysis of the beginners mind is spot on; fwiw I chose door #1 (learn another language first) after bloodying my knuckles writing low level XNA input logic.

Good video, thanks.

[u/NathanGDquest]

This is a presentation I made for GodotCon back in July. It's something I wanted to share with fellow tutorial makers.

I spent the past years dedicated to teaching Godot and worked on lots of things: different kinds of tutorials, the official docs, code demos, and paid courses.

This video is the result of talking with many of you and listening to people's problems.

You'll see the video promotes an app we're making at the end. I want to say upfront we made the app with Xananax, one of the oldest Godot Discord admins and really experienced teacher, as a result of the reflection presented in the video.

In short, it's a critique of the ways most resources teach programming and game development, including ours. Critique in the constructive sense: the second part of the video suggests some improvements.

It can be difficult to get exactly what those suggestions are. In short:

1. We can adapt to how people want to learn and how they actually learn online.

Unlike in the classroom, they have distractions, notifications, and sometimes nobody to ask for help when they get stuck. They can easily quit.

1. We should respect people's working memory and cognitive load. Our brains can only take a couple bits of information at a time.

I've been reading Celia Hodent's book The Gamer's Brain, which I highly recommend. While it talks about what science tells you about how to provide the best game user experience, it also applies to teaching.

Especially the part about how our memory works and how we can retain knowledge in our long-term memory.

Surprisingly, YouTube started recommending the video a lot. That's something totally unexpected for me: I expected this to be a bit of a niche essay for fellow teachers.

Note the app we're presenting at the end of the video will be Free and Open-Source if we manage to get 50,000 euros in funding in our ongoing Kickstarter campaign. And the campaign's also doing unexpectedly well so I think we'll get there within a week or less.

This will allow teachers worldwide to use the app in schools, to teach kids to code with Godot, freely. They'll also be able to create their own assignments and courses with it.

If you have any questions, experiences to share, counter-arguments, or comments on the video, they're most welcome.

[u/lostminds_sw]

Looks like a great tool and idea. Perhaps you could take a look at Swift Playgrounds for some inspiration regarding teaching basic programming concepts in a similar tool for learning Swift and programming on iOS/macOS.

[u/MikeLumos]

What is the tool that you guys are using at 08:56?