Rapid application development university tutorials

¶ … RAD University's website contains many tutorials on the world of technology. Ranging from the basic to the most complicated. RAD's tutorials are a decent way to dip into the abstract nature of technology without being forced to deal with the most simplistic, basic lessons. Two tutorials in specific epitomize most of RAD's tutorials: The ARP and Protocols & Servers tutorials. Both of these tutorials are representative of these lessons in general: they are amateurish yet filled with useful information.

The ARP (or Address Resolution Protocol) tutorial is not interactive, like many lessons on the site. Instead it reads like a Wikipedia article, with a short table of contents followed by a well organized article. The tutorial itself, despite the fact that there are some poorly worded sentences and clunky metaphors, is very clear in its purpose. The lessons covers the need for ARP, the historical context behind it, how it works, and finally it glosses over how the common user can use ARP tables.

Its usefulness is questionable. If the user only needs the basics of ARP, and does not mind overlooking the occasional poorly-worded sentence or jargon-filled statement, then the ARP tutorial will be more than beneficial. On the other hand if the user does not understand the basic concepts that the lesson tends to gloss over, then they will obviously drop out from confusion. Take, for instance, this sentence: "Each host will have a table (ARP cache) to maintain a mapping between each IP address (for which it has datagrams to send) and its corresponding physical address." As anyone can see, this sentence is hardly the paragon of clarity a tutorial needs to be. Despite that, however, I found myself learning quite a bit as I went through this lesson. Ignoring the disjointed sentence structure in favor of the well organized paragraph structure lead me to continually bring the information I was receiving into the context of the overall paper.

The second tutorial teaches the user about how packets of data are sent over the internet, and how to resolve errors in sending these packets. It is a fascinating lesson, because the interactive nature of the tutorial really draws the user in. It is set up as a topographical map of a network, with lines of communication drawn between separate routers and their constituent nodes. All one has to do to send a packet of information (also known as a datagram) from one client to another is set the source IP and a target IP. Click play and the user can watch a packet of data meander its way through networks and routers to its destination. Furthermore, the flash animation can even explain, in an intuitive way, how ARP works. The previous tutorial let me understand how ARP operates intellectually, this flash animation lets me understand ARP viscerally. It is a great feeling, being able to slowly explore the tutorial and learn for yourself what each procedure means and how it affects sending data.