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That's the primary reason why I no longer buy tech books very often. The writing is really poor.
Software Zen: delete this;
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There are a couple of publishers (O’Reilly, Manning, No Starch) who still (actually) edit most of their materials but problems still leak through.
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I do like the O'Reilly quick references. They're brief and give you the basic information without fluff and a lot of worthless screen captures.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I'd expect a 'Hello MAC World' program at least within three chapters which gives all instructions from scratch. Otherwise beginners will get switched off.
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Yep that’s exactly what I was thinking. The sample almost got me there but not quite.
I will def take time & get it working just wanted to see it running real fast to feel some success.
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I am with you on the crates/imports.
Maybe “add them at the bottom of the examples as comments” would be a good publishing guideline for all code samples. ?
They are kind of noisy at the top
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Upvoted. Anything that I don't know is rumor and noise.
I need everything.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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I have been using linkedin learning (formerly lynda) It has a combination of videos/text etc... Usually they consider everything but not always.
Like you I need everything. I find I learn best if I have all of the following
Examples!!! Good real world examples
Listing of requirements to get them working (the thing it seems you are missing)
Someone talking me thru steps 1.2.3.4.5. opps 4 again (I am slow I need everything)
Someone having written out those steps 1.2.3.45 opps did 5 too fast again. What was 4?
Again Examples to review. again because mine still isn't working (I am slow I need everything)
If any of the above is missing. I am not sure I am going to learn that. <grin>
ymmv
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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Thanks for sharing that. I feel like I'm the only one who gets stuck sometimes.
At work, any time I mention any problem everyone be like, "Oh no, we've never seen that. It must just be you."
Yes, it's just me. Then I search & there is StackOverflow answer with 1 million upvotes 
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I feel your pain. There are far too many books like the one you are reading.
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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Related: how, when you try to follow an online tutorial and the first steps go well, and then some weird error suddenly pops up and blocks all progress.
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In a sense, maybe relish it. Be persistent and figure it out. You'll learn things the example wasn't ever going to otherwise teach you.
Many folks learned to do this before StackOverflow (or even Google) existed.
Different people have the different modes of doing their best learning.
I think that it is inherent to the craft that learning to dig is maybe, in essence, learning to do.
That said, hiding all the shovels is understandable but disconcerting. OTOH, rooms full of shovels are almost as bad and maybe worse.
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Perhaps the answer is that when you find too few or too many shovels, find another resource for learning. Use the shovel count as a gauge of the adequacy of the resource - and this number will vary by individual, some want all the shovels up front to study, some will want only the needed few for that point in the process. Personally, I like having all the shovels up front. I want to look at all the examples and all the dependencies all in one heap, and I may skip the explanations and directions in favor of spending more time with the actual code. For that reason, I avoid books on coding and though I enjoy a good tutorial vid - a code-along - I don't learn nearly as well as when I can just see code samples aplenty.
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Yep, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
You invest this initial time then you're just stuck.
really frustrating & annoying.
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Many languages seem to have raced to having the simplest/shortest example of Hello World by tucking away or automating a bunch of the plumbing that makes the sausage.
You find tons of example code out there lacking usings, imports, and other bits similar to your example.
Some of those only put the man behind a curtain because if you were to reveal him it would suddenly become an overwhelming amount of worm cans and rabbit holes.
Still, I can't help but shake my head at it sometimes. I wouldn't want to be a rookie right now. Too many curtains hiding central figures and too many 'black boxes'. Many of them, you would not even know they exist which is sort of the first step to ever even being able to want to go looking for them in order to understand more.
Mostly, those curtains/boxes, they are not totally bad things. Productivity is great and those things that tend to be "ok as default" or "*most* always handle themselves"... it's nice not to worry about or even see them. The problem comes when you really want to know every detail, but you can't even be sure you do. Unknowable unknowns.
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That is a great post & exactly the type of thing I'm talking about -- all those things the authors leave out which are actually critical to understanding.
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Yep, been there. I think during my career (now over!) there's only been 3 books that
I really worked through:
1) Z-80 Microcomputer Handbook (published in 1978, when I built my first computer).
2) Starting Forth
3) Understanding Digital Signal Processing
All the other tech books I've purchased just provided bits and pieces, basically
just filling in specific blanks.
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My knock-down, number-one, all-time stranded-on-a-dessert-island favorite book is...
Programming Windows 3.1 [^] by Charles Petzold (only $99 right now at amazon )
It was a complete and thorough software development training guide.
I wonder if "kids these days" would even read a tome like that??
Now all they want is "what's the javascript that makes this do that?"
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I was deep into embedded programming by the time the Petzold book came out so I only did a little bit of it. It was a good book, but not real relevant to what I was programming for. On the Windows side I mostly did RAD (VB, Delphi, C++ Builder) programs for test equipment.
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Same with a lot of videos.
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This is extremely common and is caused by the fact that almost no authors use "test readers".
When I thought I was done writing my C++ book intended to be suitable for people with no previous programming background, I found a test reader to read it. I basically had to rewrite the entire book because as an expert, I couldn't understand how much she didn't already know.
The result? I got fan mail from readers, for a technical book.
Why doesn't anyone else do this? I don't know with certainty but I can guess: it's a LOT of work. Another issue is that you need someone who can tell you in detail what she doesn't understand. This is not a common ability.
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Great post! Is your book available on Amazon?
Thanks for sharing that great story & I agree with you about it being a lot of work.
I think that is why Charles Petzold's books were so long (and so great).
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Very interesting. Fantastic introduction by Eric S. Raymond (a world-class author himself).
Also, interesting that you explained that you thought the reader would read the chapters multiple times.
I have always had to do that (started out in 1992 with C++ for Dummies and wore that book out).
I would read 1st 3 chapters, give up for a while.
Start again, read 1st 5 chapters. Give up.
Start again, read 1st 5 chapters again. Give up.
Start again, read 1st 6f chapters. Give up. etc.
I always felt like an idiot.
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Thanks! I hope if you read my book you won't feel like an idiot. 
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