Possibility of examples of usage for class documents?

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:bust_in_silhouette: Asked By kc
:warning: Old Version Published before Godot 3 was released.

Hello.
as a beginning programmer, with no formal computer science education, it is difficult for me to understand what the uses of different classes are.

This is combined with not really understanding how to program, having little understanding of workflow, and being interested in learning how to program within the Godot environment, has led me to request the possibility of examples in the Classes help in scripting in the editor.

Godot is excellent for quite a few reasons, however, it is not clear to me as to what the approaches are to performing all sorts of activities.

Having examples as part of the class descriptions, would be of immeasurable help.

I understand that it is very possible to learn, however it seems like a very difficult task, as it also involves learning the fundamental ideas which the Godot paradigm is based on, within the discipline of computer science, and probably game design.

Perhaps a Godot focused collection, of tasks to complete, along with some notes relating to the tasks, might be helpful.

Imagine, if GodotScript was the first language that a person was to learn? What would that do for Godot popularity?

This by the way is specifically a question relating to scripting within Godot. The information about how to engage with the engine has not been an issue for me, however, I am finding it impossible to understand, how to really make sense of and use the large number of tools at my disposal, due to the otherwise clear and very computer science standard way of referencing how the various methods and Classes work.

If I could see and possibly then test a working example of code, then I would be able to explore the Documentation and slowly learn about how to make Godot do things.

As it is I am finding myself looking through other peoples poorly documented script in an attempt to teach myself what it is that various things actually do.

I understand that this might be seen as a common problem, with non-programmers attemting to learn new skills, and I am comfortable with the idea that i will never be as skilled as a person who spends proportionately more time working as a programmer (which is not my main focus)

To reiterate.

Having examples as part of the class descriptions, would be of immeasurable help.
Thank you.

If your question is mostly a request for having usage examples in most classes of Godot directly in the doc (as Qt does with a lot of its classes: QPushButton Class | Qt Widgets 5.15.16), you should issue a request on Github.

Zylann | 2016-11-26 22:39

I don’t like to have examples in class references because, once you know how it works, you only want to see/remember the reference (method usage, parameters and nothing more), the cheats sheets are good for common uses but not the reference.


I suggest you to look for programming first, some online python tutorials (there are many with online interpreters) to get used to the syntax, then the demos and reference should be (almost) enough once you know how things (syntax mostly) works.

Don’t get too fast into the object oriented paradigm, stay with the basics (just using properties and methods) until you get enough practice to dive into other OO features.


The approach to make things is as big (or more) as the ammount of people doing them, make horrible things and lot of mistakes until you get what works better for you and your project and develop your own style ^^


Finally, I see GDScript as a great language to teach to code but is too young yet to have enough resources (even older engines have issues documenting and making examples of all they have), still depends on the old art of self-teaching programming.

Maybe you can try to keep a list of things that are helping you, what lacks information, and what confuses you so one day the tutorials could be made for people in your situation.

eons | 2016-11-27 14:44

Excellent suggestions people.

Understandably this is a difficult Subject.
Thank you for your time.

I will consider suggesting it on Github.

In regards to Clutter, perhaps this is a formatting issue?

kc | 2017-01-25 20:25