I wrote a new tutorial for Anvil, intended for absolute beginners. It’s a total of 150 pages, with more than 200 screenshots and 22 app examples. It covers the basics of coding in Python, in context, so users who’ve never written a line of code before can use Anvil to take their first steps (and get quite a way on their journey). I put the tutorial, maybe better described as a mini-course, up for free at:
I’m excited to dig into this and learn from your experience and commentary. After a quick initial look, I’m already thinking about following this as a way to introduce my 9-year-old to coding this summer.
The last few sections are almost certainly tiresome for a 9 year old, but hopefully the first examples may be interesting and fun enough to capture some attention. I’d be very interested to hear if it’s accessible enough for kids! Whether or not my tutorial works for your needs, I think Anvil is a fantastic tool for young beginners - hmm - maybe I should write one particularly for children! (or perhaps make a youtube video for kids…)
I haven’t read it yet Nick but this sounds really interesting… please feel free to nudge me on Twitter @awsom_solutions and I’ll be happy to spread the word!
PS Have you considered serialising this and posting on Medium.com?
I haven’t ever published on Medium, but I will take a look at how their process works. I also don’t use Twitter, but an interest in sharing Anvil does motivate me to respond there. Shedding my 1990s mentality is probably due
That made for a busy few days. 200+ upvotes and lots of positive response on Reddit. I’m certainly interested in promoting more, if anyone has additional suggestions. Next, perhaps a video series covering everything in the tutorial for people who prefer to learn that way…
Thank you @gp2 , I hope it’s helpful! My first priority will be to make a version with screenshots that show the Beta editor. After that, I have plans for a Udemy course which covers more depth and larger projects. Along the way, I’d like to make enough YouTube videos to attract more interest to Anvil. I’m sure I’ll add more to the tutorial, and will certainly polish it at times, but I hope it does what was originally intended, which is the get absolute beginners going with Anvil, actually understanding how to produce common sorts of basic apps, without requiring other texts or previous background to get started. Covering more depth, I think will be best left to a proper course (Udemy is my first plan, but I’m sure there are other great platforms once I get that done).
First, a HUGE thank you.
After playing with some of the Anvil Tutorials, it was your site that I still look to for examples to help with nuts and bolts of code.
And… I read some of the “philosophy” regarding programming that is linked at the end of your tutorial page. YES! I have sent this to others in my field to inspire them to use what we have to build better tools ourselves.
More to say, but I wanted to thank you very much for your work.
Do you have your youtube channel up and going?
Do you have anything on udemy yet?
Did a quick search on both and didn’t find you.
I’m glad to hear it was helpful! Thank you for taking the time to send feedback
I have made a few videos, but have been waiting for the move from classic to beta editor to be finalized so that any course videos would have a longer shelf life (I wasn’t expecting that transition to take several months…)
I’ve been looking forward to the move out of Beta mostly in anticipation of the content you’ve got queued up! (No pressure, though. I really just want to express appreciation for your work.)
