Very good point in post in the entry below about tutorials for beginners that leap from “Hello, world” to how you programme the space shuttle.

It is almost impossible to find an introductory book for “idiots” or “dummies” that doesn’t do this. There are books that promise you can learn to use SQL, PHP AND Apache in 24 hours. I don’t know how much of a moron this makes me. I can’t even read a couple of thousand pages of a novel in 24 hours , let alone read a couple of thousand pages of a book that’s too heavy to lift while actually writing and running the code.

If the Trades Descriptions Act covered these books they would have to be titled “Learn enough of x to be reasonably confident, if you have access to good internet forums and a few mates who know all about x, over the course of 6 months solid effort. Oh, and by the way, you had better be really good with computers to start with”

This would probably shift a few less books. However, when you did the introductory bit that lets you write “My first x application” and display your own name onscreen, then wondered if your book had been sold with a dozen missing chapters because the next page says “Now code the operating software to control a nuclear reactor” you would at least be prepared for it to take some effort.