Some of my following words might be interpreted that I'm standing on Zend The Company's side, but that's not the case.
On 9 November 2012 23:21, Andreas Möller <a...@softe.is> wrote: > Hello Robert, > > > > I don't understand what are you getting at? > > What I am getting at is that I find the quality of the ZF2 documentation > quite low and wonder whether it is this low in quality because Zend rather > wants people to spend 1.200€ on a course that covers the basics of building > applications with ZF2 than allocating resources for the generation of an > end user documentation that will get people up and running. > > Zend The Company is allocating a lot of money as it is. AFAIK, they have 3 people working full-time on ZF (1.x and 2.x!) - Enrico, Matthew and Ralph. You can't blame Zend for trying to make some money out of it. Well, I don't. I'm earning my bread with ZF's help for 3-4 years now. Also, they are not the only ones making money out of it - there's a bunch of books you can buy to help you learn (maybe for ZF2 not *yet*, but ZF1 had a bunch). Heck, the most I learned about ZF1 was when I read Keith Pope's (aka muteor) book. > Let's be honest, the documentation is very poor - as is the layout and > navigation of the website where it can be found at. The documentation of > ZF1 was much, much better and was good enough to build an application from > scratch just by reading the documentation (even though it wasn't perfect). > I personally read the docs up on readthedocs.org, or compile it on my own. Much clearer that way. Granted, the ZF website layout is ... Interesting at times. But hey, I think that's on Github now too, so suggestions are, I believe, welcome there, too. > > I'm aware that I as - an end user, that is, as someone who wants to use > ZF2 to build applications with it - would be more knowledgeable if I could > have taken the time and had become a contributor right from the start, or > hang out on IRC channels all the time and read every email that has been > sent on the mailing list, but: it seems impossible with a job and a private > life and with the desire to read a book and sleep and go out every once in > a while and what not to keep updated on all these channels and catch up > with all the blog posts that are being written and I just really wish there > was a decent documentation on the *why* and *how* of ZF2 components, that > would help understand everything without giving me a big headache. > No one's expecting from any one to be 100% in the code, on line, knowing everything (well, maybe apart from Matthew, Ralph and Enrico ;) ). I, personally, did my best to contribute to the docs when Matthew asked for help. I hope it was worth it at least a tiny little bit. And after that, I fell off the face of the Earth once again - life, work and beers got in the way. Yes, it's difficult to keep up, yes, we'd all love a magic bucket of knowledge to get poured in our brains, but that's just not how it works. Damn, even after 4 years with ZF1 I *still* have bits and pieces that are nothing but pure black magic for me. As for contributing, sending PRs and fixing bugs and docs is not the *only* way to contribute. There are easier ways to do it - you read that one chapter on View Helpers and think "Damn, I wish this would explain in a better way how to write custom view helpers." Just go over to the Github zf2-documentation repo and open a ticket with what's your issue with it. Might not be fixed in 5 minutes, but sooner or later, someone *will* fix it. > > I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but at the moment I feel not tempted > very much, but pushed even more into buying one of these classes - only > because of the lack of alternatives (as it seems). > I won't recommend to buy it or not to buy it, as I have no idea about it's contents or quality. > > I really want to get going fast, but I can't take a month or two off work > to study all the components and their source code. > > I feel lost. > I need to ask you this - do you know ZF 1.x? Why am I asking this? Because when I started learning ZF1 (1.4 I think it was back then), I felt completely lost with it. I gave up saying something like "Who needs this? This is just a mess." I felt lost. Around 1.6 I had another stab at it. Felt lost once again. Slowly, I ploughed through it. 1.7, 1.8... and the rest is history. :) Then ZF2 alphas, betas, RCs came out. Then stable. I was lost, once again. Frustrated with that (and some other things as well), I wanted to quickly port my ZF1 based blog to ZF2. And then I remembered how I felt when I learned ZF1 and that eventually I *did* learn it. And I'm confident that the same will happen with ZF2. I'm a fairly smart guy, I can learn it. Granted, it will take time, but it's my own time I invest, into my own knowledge. The gist of this little trip down memory lane, is that, in my opinion, don't expect to get the hang of it fast (where fast being days or weeks). Don't rage quit after a day or two just because some stiff prick called Robert didn't get to updating that piece of documentation. The ZF2 community and it's knowledge is still fresh, new. Yes, we'd all wish it would be at the level where ZF1 is at (it's what, 6-7 years old now?), but we (we, the community), still have to learn, together, to teach and to be taught, how to use the new MVC, the voodoo that is the EventManager, the Service locators, managers and what-have-yous. What I want to say with all this is - have patience, don't get frustrated, and You *will* get there. Honest! If not, beer's on me ;) Regards, Robert
