@Vandy - thanks! (I think!) That kinda puts the pressure on getting more done! I'll get on it.

@ Midgardsormr & Redrobes - Firstly, the Tutorial really is supposed to be targeted at Beginners so will doubtless be rather mundane for experienced modellers like yourself! I would also say that I wouldn't normally hold my coding up as a "good standard" - I tend to be a tad slipshod! However, it should illustrate the basics of the tool - I hope.
I've not really tried any other render tools - in depth. I usually get frightened off by the GUI. That's not to say that I dislike GUI's in general, far from it. I think POVRay struck a note with me because by experience and training I'm a hardware engineer - there are similarities in approach to POV and VHDL that I used to write. In both of these there is no overall "order", especially. All commands in VHDL can be considered to run siiimultaneously rather than consecutively, in POV most of what happens is timne independant of other commands - with obvious exceptions.
My software experience is more in assemblers and (as mentioned elsewhere) ye olde BASIC and ALGOL of yore. What I hope to illustrate in the next Part of the Tutorial is the seamless inclusion of "basic" consecutive software commands into what is essentially code structure where seqentialism is largely irrelevant.

I'll get on with Part 2 and then you can judge better what I mean, I hope.